CAUSES, ORIGINS, AND LESSONS OF THE
VIETNAM WAR
HEARINGS
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
UNITED STATES SENATE
NINETY-SECOND CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
ON
CAUSES, ORIGINS, AND LESSONS OF THE
VIETNAM WAR
MAY 9, 10, AND 11, 1972
Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Relations
CAUSES, ORIGINS, AND LESSONS OF THE
VIETNAM WAR
HEARINGS
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
UNITED STATES SENATE
NINETY-SECOND CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
ON
CAUSES, ORIGINS, AND LESSONS OF THE
VIETNAM WAR
MAY 9, 10, AND 11, 1972
NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY SCHOOL of LAW LIBRARY
^y,f7^/^7/z/
Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Relations
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
83-605 WASHINGTON : 1973
For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office,
Washington, D.C. 20402 - Price $2.35 domestic postpaid or S2.00 GPO Bookstore
Stock Number 5270-01713
r
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
J. W. FULBRIGHT, Arkansas, Chairman
JOHN SPARKMAN, Alabama GEORGE D. AIKEN, Vermont
MIKE MANSFIELD, Montana CLIFFORD P. CASE, New Jersey
FRANK CHURCH, Idaho JOHN SHERMAN COOPER, Kentucky
STUART SYMINGTON, Missouri JACOB K. JAVITS, New York
CLAIBORNE PELL, Rhode Island HUGH SCOTT, Pennsylvania
GALE W. McGEE, Wyoming JAMES B. PEARSON, Kansas
EDMUND S. MUSKIE, Maine CHARLES H. PERCY, Illinois
WILLIAM B. SPONG, Jr., Virginia
Carl Mabct, Chief of Staff
Arthur M. Kuhl, Chief Clerk
(ID
a~>
p—
_J
l —1
CONTENTS
Page
Preface v
Statements by :
Gelb, Leslie H., Brookings Institution 2
Thomson, James C, Jr., Harvard University
Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr., City University of New York 59
Chomsky, Noam, Massachusetts Institute of Technology 80
White, Frank M., former major, Office of Strategic Services ; former
reporter, Time magazine 145
Moffat, Abbot Low, former chief, Division of Southeast Asian Affairs,
Department of State 161
Insertions for the record :
Prepared statement of Leslie H. Gelb 8
Prepared statement of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr 71
Prepared statement of Noam Chomsky S9
Charles de Gaulle on Vietnam 130
TV interview with President Nixon of July 1, 1970 134
Frank White's dispatch to Life magazine describing experiences in
Vietnam, 1945-46 154
Prepared statement of Abbot Low Moffat 172
Appendix :
"The Essential Domino : American Politics and Vietnam," article by
Leslie H. Gelb, Foreign Affairs, April 1972 207
"Vietnam: The System Worked," article by Leslie H. Gelb, Foreign
Policy, summer 1971 225
Documents relating to OSS activity in French Indochina :
Introduction 241
I. The "Deer" Mission to Viet Minh Headquarters, July-Sep-
tember, 1945 :
Letter of instruction to Major Thomas, May 16, 1945 243
"Deer" Report No. 1, July 17, 1945 244
"Deer" Report. July 20. 1945 248
Report on "Deer" Mission — Maj. A. K. Thomas, Septem-
ber, 17, 1945 251
The Viet Minh Party or League — Maj. A. K. Thomas 205
Pictures from the "Deer" Mission 273
II. "Detachment 404" : Mission to Saigon :
Operation "Embankment" (memorandum from Maj. Peter
Dewey), August 25, 1945 281
Chronological list of dates for Mission "Embankment"
(memorandum from Maj. Herbert Bluechel), Septem-
ber 17, 1945 282
Political aims and philosophy of the Viet Minh Govern-
ment of French Indo-China, and their attitude toward
Americans (memorandum from Capt. Herbert Blue-
chel), September 30, 1945 283
Comments on reports published by the Allied Control
Commission, Saigon, concerning the events of Septem-
ber 26, 1945 (memorandum by Capt. Herbert Bluechel),
September 30, 1945 285
Affidavit bv Capt. Herbert Bluechel relating to the death
of Maj. Peter Dewey, October 13, 1945 286
Affidavit bv Capt. Frank White relating to the death
of Maj. Peter Dewey, October 13. 1945 292
(in)
IV
Appendix — Continued
Documents relating to OSS activity in French Indochina— Continued
II. "Detachment 404" : Mission to Saigon— Continued
Investigation of death of Maj. Peter Dewey (memo-
randum by Maj. F. N. Small with map), October 25, Paw
1945 296
III. Secret Intelligence Branch (S.I.) reports and documents
relating to the Viet Minh :
Calling card of Vo Nguyen Giap with note 301
Appeal bv Ho Chi Minh to "Fellow Countrymen," Sep-
tember 5, 1945 302
Interview with Bao Dai, former emperor of Annam,
September 19, 1945 303
Interview with Prince Souphanouvong of Laos, Septem-
ber 19, 1945 304
Interview with Ho Chi Minh, September 19, 1945 305
Report on the Provisional Government, F.I.C., Septem-
ber 20, 1945 307
Political information (from Swift), October 17, 1945 311
IV. iStrategic Service Unit "intelligence dissemination" reports
from French Indochina 327
Military and political information, February 28, 1946 328
Political information, March 4, 1946 330
Military information, March 6, 1946 331
French and Chinese clashes, March 6, 1946 332
Political information, March 17, 1946 333
Political information, March 17, 18, 1946 334
French troops enter Hanoi, March 18, 1946 335
Political and military information, March 19, 1946 336
Political and economic information, March 20, 1946 337
Political information— North Indo-China, March 20, 1946- 338
1946 : 338
Military and political information, March 22, 1946 339
Political information, March 24, 1946 340
PREFACE
February 1973.
During three clays of hearings in May 1972, the Foreign Relations
Committee heard testimony describing the origin and evolution of
American involvement in Vietnam. Appearing as witnesses before the
Committee were Messrs. Leslie Gelb, James C. Thomson, Noam Chom-
sky, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Abbot Low Moffat, and Frank White.
In testimony covering the years 1945-72, each man shared with the
committee his particular experiences and extensive knowledge in an
effort to portray a full picture of the Vietnam conflict.
Of particular interest was the description by former Office of Stra-
tegic Service (OSS) Officer Frank White of the conversations he held
with Ho Chi Minh immediately after World War II, and the extent
of contact Ho and the Viet Minh had with other OSS officers. As a
result of Mr. White's testimony, I requested the intelligence reports
detailing these early contacts. With the assistance of the National
Archives, the Foreign Relations Committee has recently secured the
declassification and release of a selection of these documents. They are
being made public for the first time in the appendix of this print. Nec-
essary deletions have been made for security reasons and are noted in
the text wherever appropriate.
The Committee decided at its meeting in executive session on
February 6 that these hearings with the previously classified material
should be published.
J. W. Fulbright, Chairman.
(V)
CAUSES, ORIGINS, AND LESSONS OF THE VIETNAM
WAR
TUESDAY, MAY 9, 1972
United States Senate,
Committee on Foreign Relations,
Washington, D.C.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., in room 4221,
New Senate Office Building, Senator J. W. Fulbright (chairman),
presiding.
Present : Senators Fulbright, Muskie, Aiken and Percy.
The Chairman. The committee will come to order.
opening statement
The United States today has 68,000 troops stationed in South Viet-
nam, with an additional 52,000 men on ships offshore, 37,000 Air Force
personnel in neighboring Thailand and 10,000 on Guam. The arrival
of the sixth aircraft carrier stationed off Vietnam brings the number
of combat aircraft to 1,000. On some days in past weeks these aircraft
have flown as many as 1,000 sorties. As of April 29 of this year, over
55,861 Americans have lost their lives in Indochina.
This week's hearings on the causes, origins and lessons of the Viet-
nam war, while historical in emphasis, cannot overlook the fact that
the United States continues to be deeply involved in this tragic war in
Vietnam.
The questions we will address in these hearings are : Why are we
fighting in Vietnam? How did we get there? What were the reasons
for the initial U.S. commitment? Have these reasons changed, and if
so, why do we persist ?
The United States has been actively involved in Vietnam for well
over a decade although the roots of that involvement stretch back as
far as the Second World War. By reviewing the history of the deepen-
ing U.S. involvement in Indochina, we hope this inquiry will yield
lessons from which present and future policy might benefit.
Within the government and the scholarly community, a number of
explanations of U.S. policy in Vietnam have developed during the
past years. In the next few days of hearings we will consider a variety
of views and perspectives on the war.
By applying these alternative critical perspectives to the history
of U.S. policy in Vietnam, we may arrive at a better understanding of
the causes, origins and escalation of the war.
A recent, very important contribution to that understanding was
the declassification and publication of "United States-Vietnam Rela-
(l)
tions. 1945-1967," popularly known as the "Pentagon Papers." This
compilation of documents and analyses sheds light on much of the
official thinking behind critical decisions taken in the war.
To contribute to a better understanding of these decisions, the Com-
mittee on Foreign Relations has undertaken its own staff studies of
important turning points in the war. The first study, "Vietnam Com-
mitments, 1961," dealt with the critical decisions made during the first
year of the Kennedy Administration.
The second study, "The United States and Vietnam; 1944-1947,"
examined in detail American attitudes toward Ho Chi Minh during
and after the Second World War.
A third study on negotiations remains classified at the insistence of
the Department of State.
Two more studies, one on the events leading up to the Diem coup and
the other on U.S. bombing policies, are in the process of being com-
pleted. In preparing these studies, the committee staff has relied
heavily on the Pentagon history. Despite our requests to several execu-
tive agencies for additional documentation, these have been denied us.
INVITATIONS TO TESTIFY
This week's hearings on the origins of the war are a continuation of
the effort to advance the dialogue over and further understanding of
the U.S. role in the Vietnam war. To bring a broad spectrum of per-
spectives to bear on the causes, origins and lessons of the war, the com-
mittee has invited distinguished scholars and former governmental
officials to testify, The committee was particularly anxious to obtain
the benefit of the experience of officials who had been actually involved
in early decisionmaking on the war. Unfortunately, the high-ranking
officials who were invited to appear either refused to testify or backed
out at the last moment. Only former Secretary of State Dean Rusk has
indicated that he might be able to appear, but at a later date.
TODAY'S WITNESSES
As our first witness we are fortunate to have Dr. Leslie Gelb from
Brookings Institution who served as the Chairman of the Vietnam
Task Force in the Department of Defense which prepared the Penta-
gon history of the war. He will be followed by Professor James C.
Thomson, Jr., from Harvard University, who served in the State De-
partment and on the White House staff during the Kennedy and
Johnson administrations.
Dr. Gelb, we are very pleased to have you. Since the hearings were
set, of course, there have been some significant changes in the situation.
Whether or not you wish to comment on those, of course, is up to you,
but we would be very pleased now if you would present your testimony.
STATEMENT OF LESLIE H. GELB, BROOKINGS INSTITUTION
Mr. Gelb. Mr. Chairman, I am honored by your committee's invita-
tion to present testimony on the subject of Vietnam.
What is really on my mind is the President's speech last night and
the actions that will flow from it.
I believe my testimony is relevant to that speech and those actions,
but I would be glad to comment further on the President's speech later
in my testimony.
The purpose of your hearings is history, but with respect to Viet-
nam the past and the present are irrevocably interlocked.
The mind-numbing sameness of the war and the overwhelming fact
that this war is not }7et history compel us to be contemporary historians
with all the attendant risks.
Mr. Chairman, with your permission, I would like to severely sum-
marize my statement and ask that it be entered in the record in its
entirety.
The Chairman. Yes, indeed; it will all be entered and you may
proceed.
Mr. Gelb. My testimony will deal with (1) the past, specifically, the
causes of United States involvement in the war, and (2) the present,
specifically the lessons of the past that bear on today.
Wars are supposed to tell us about ourselves. Are we a wise and just
Nation ? Or are we foolish and aggressive, merciless or humane, well-
led or misled, vital or decadent, hopeful or hopeless? Nations in war
and after war, win or lose, try to scratch away at the paste or glue or
traditions or values that held their societies together and see of what
they are made. It is arguable whether a society should indulge in such
self-scrutiny. Societies are, as Edmund Burke wrote, "delicate, intri-
cate wholes" that are more easily damaged than improved when sub-
jected to the glare of Grand Inquisitors.
But in the case of our own society and the war in Vietnam, too many
people are seeking answers and are entitled to them, and many are
only too eager to fill in the blanks. The families and friends of those
who were killed and wounded will want to know whether it was worth
it after all. Intellectuals will want to know "Why Vietnam?" Men
seeking and holding political office will demand to know who was
responsible.
The answers to these questions will themselves become political facts
and forces shaping the United States' role in the world and our lives
at home for years to come.
OFFERED EXPLANATIONS OF U.S. INVOLVEMENT IN VIETNAM
Central to this inquiry is the issue of causes of U.S. involvement in
Vietnam. I have found eight discernible explanations advanced in the
Vietnam literature. Different authors combine these explanations in
various ways, but I will keep them separate for the purpose of analysis.
I will then sketch my own position.
Let me just list, Mr. Chairman, the eight different explanations that
have been offered: (1) the arrogance of power; (2) bureaucratic poli-
tics; (3) our domestic political situation and forces ; (4) imperialism;
(5) the explanation of men making hard choices pragmatically; (6)
balance of power politics, talk of honor and keeping commitments,
credibility of our commitments; (7) the slippery slope thesis, that we
got into the war in Vietnam through excessive optimism and inad-
vertence; and (8) I think, most importantly, the explanation that we
got into Vietnam principally to stop communism.
HOW AND WITH WHAT EXPECTATIONS UNITED STATES BECAME INVOLVED
As of this point in my own research. I advance three propositions to
explain how and with what expectations the United States became
involved in this war :
First, the U.S.'s involvement in Vietnam is not mainly or mostly
a story of step by step, inadvertent descent into unforeseen quick-
sand. It is primarily a story of why U.S. leaders considered that
it was vital not to lose Vietnam by force to communism. Our leaders
believed Vietnam to be vital not for itself but for what they thought
its loss would mean internationally and domestically. Previous involve-
ment made further involvement more unavoidable and, to this extent,
commitments were inherited. But judgments of Vietnam's vitalness,
beginning: with the Korean war, were sufficient in themselves to set
the course for escalation.
Second, our Presidents were never actually seeking a military vic-
tory in Vietnam. In my opinion, they were doing only what they
thought was minimally necessary at each stage to keep Indochina, and
later South Vietnam, out of Communist hands. In a way, this made
our policy a functional equivalent of escalation and a functional
equivalent of seeking victory.
This forced our Presidents to be brakemen, to do less than those who
were urging military victory and to reject proposals for disengage-
ment. It also meant that our Presidents wanted a negotiated settle-
ment without fully realizing — though realizing more than their
critics — that a civil war cannot be ended by political compromise.
Third, our Presidents and most of their lieutenants were not deluded
by optimistic reports of progress and did not proceed on the basis of
wishful thinking about winning a military victory in South Vietnam.
They recognized that the steps they were taking were not adequate to
win the war and that unless Hanoi relented, they would have to do
more and more.
Their strategy was to persevere in the hope that their will to con-
tinue, if not the practical effects of their actions, would cause the Com-
munists to relent.
With your permission, Mr. Chairman, I would like to enter into the
record of my testimony the article in which I developed these proposi-
tions and expand on these propositions.
The Chairman. Yes, without objection, it will be so done. (See
appendix.)
PRESIDENT NIXON'S JUSTIFICATION FOR CONTINUATION OF WAR
Mr. Gelb. President Nixon may no longer be devoted to simple anti-
communism as the main reason for pursuing the Vietnam war. His
administration has done much to rid the public debate of the old cold
war cliches. The President's last two speeches, however, in which he
frequently invoked the "Communist" threat, does raise suspicions
about changes in his thinking. Nevertheless, President Nixon has for
the most part justified continuation of the war along two lines : first,
he says that it is crucial to our foreign policy and, second, he says that
losing would lead to a nightmare of recrimination at home undermin-
ing political support for U.S. interest abroad.
CENTRAL TASK BEFORE COMMITTEE
From my vantage point the central task before this committee is to
evaluate the President's rationales on their merits, of course, but also
against the lessons we should have learned from 25 years of war in
Vietnam.
LESSONS WE SHOULD HAVE LEARNED
Lesson one concerns the Saigon government and military forces.
They always get better, but they never get good enough. The current
North Vietnamese offensive, whatever the immediate results, shows
once again that the Saigon forces cannot defend themselves without
massive American assistance. Regardless of what can be said about the
improvement and bravery of the Saigon forces, one simple fact ob-
scures all the rest — a North Vietnamese force of some 100,000-plus men
are fighting and beating a 1 million-plus South Vietnamese armed
force backed up by about 800 tactical air sorties per day. Something is
wrong somewhere. Something always has been wrong.
The lesson is that military power without political cohesiveness and
support is an empty shell. Without the legitimacy, without political
legitimacy in a government and the quest for it in South Vietnam
seems never ending, the Saigon regime perpetually will require Amer-
ican support.
Lesson two concerns the Hanoi government. "While annual hints
and predictions have it that the North Vietnamese are about to expire,
their will to fight seems undiminished and they keep coming back. It
is not necessary to glorify Hanoi to face this fact. The brutality of
Hanoi's methods of warfare have matched, if not exceeded, Saigon's,
but something for them always has gone right somewhere.
The lesson, I believe, is that time and determination are on the side
of the elemental tide of nationalism and that the leadership in Hanoi,
for historical reasons, always has symbolized this basic political force.
Lesson three comes back to the nature of the war itself. The war in
Vietnam was and is a civil war and a war for national independence,
in my opinion. The central question of who shall rule Vietnam would
have been settled on just these terms long ago had it not been for the
intervention of outside powers. The reason, I think, is that the war
will never end as long as outside powers keep it going. This goes for
Russia and China as well as for the United States. But the United
States has a particular responsibility for prolonging this war. We
must face the tragic and brutal fact and probability that more Vietna-
mese will die by the continuation of the present war than will die, in
my opinion, from the bloodletting following its conclusion. _
We can attribute great principles to our involvement in Vietnam
but these principles can mean only continuing death to the Vietnamese
and in the end the struggle will be resolved as it began, by the Vietna-
mese themselves.
A fourth lesson related to the others concerns bombing and, I be-
lieve, mining of ports. The lesson is that more bombing and mining
will bring neither victory nor peace.
More bombing and mining in North Vietnam will, in time, some-
what curtail Hanoi's present offensive in the south but at the risk of
once again setting back U.S. relations with Russia and China and at
the price of countless civilian lives.
6
More bombing in South Vietnam -will impede Hanoi's offensive at
the expense of killing and making refugees out of hundreds of thou-
sands of people.
What, then, is the purpose of such senseless slaughter ?
A fifth lesson concerns domestic dissent. Many people who partici-
pated in the efforts of the last 7 years to change our policy say
that they think they were wasting their time. I do not agree. Their
opposition and the potential threat of greater public opposition was a
constant factor in the deliberations of American policymakers over
the years.
The lesson is that dissenters may not have been powerful but they
were not powerless. Responsible criticism often centered in these cham-
bers, played an important and honorable role in preventing worse out-
rages from taking place.
A sixth and final lesson stemming from the others concerns dealing
with dilemmas and ending the war.
DILEMMAS PRESENTED TO UNITED STATES BY VIETNAM
Given the constant goal of a non-Communist south Vietnam since
the Korean war, Vietnam has presented the United States with
dilemmas.
At first our leaders realized there was no chance of defeating the
Vietminh unless France granted independence to Vietnam, but that
if France granted independence to Vietnam she would not remain and
fight the war. So we could not win with France and we could not win
without her. Then our leaders recognized that Diem was hopelessly
losing the support of the people but, at the same time, that he repre-
sented the only hope of future political stability. So we could not win
with Diem and we could not win without him. Later, our leaders came
to the view that the Saigon regime could not survive without massive
American involvement and that the North Vietnamese effort seemed
able to survive despite our efforts. So, again, the war cannot be won
with the United States nor without the United States.
REASONS GIVEN FOR PERSISTING QUESTIONED
In full knowledge of these dilemmas, our leaders persisted never-
theless. Each successor group of leaders thought that they might just
succeed where their predecessors had failed, or at least that they would
prevent defeat. Our leaders plowed on for the range of reasons dis-
cussed earlier in this paper.
For many years, until the American people saw the policy was not
working and began doubting the word of their elected officials, these
reasons found a generous reception. It is not difficult to understand
why proposals for U.S. disengagement fell on deaf ears. People be-
lieved in this war for a very long time, but this is a different time and
we have, I think, a new and more sensible lens through which to view
the war.
The old rationales about nations falling like dominoes to communism
and our own Nation falling into the pit of McCarthyism no longer, in
my judgment, can stand close scrutiny. Extremists looking for scape-
goats will try to cause trouble but every indication is that the American
people want out of this war. Nor should U.S. withdrawal from Viet-
nam presage a return to popular isolationism. If continuing commit-
ments elsewhere in the world are honestly explained and seem reason-
able to the American people, they have a proven record of being will-
ing to bear international burdens.
As for the fate of Vietnam being central to the credibility and suc-
cesses of all U.S. foreign policy, as President Xixon has often sug-
gested, this is a highly questionable proposition. What wisdom is there
that causes President Nixon to link what he calls the "dignity of the
office of the Presidency" to the fate of the Saigon forces? Who still
believes that any of our allies expect us to fight indefinitely ? How
many of our allies were worried enough about the fate of Vietnam to
make a meaningful contribution to its defense ? If anything, the domino
theory may now be true in reverse, that is, if we continue the war,
this act alone might jeopardize the growing pursuit of common inter-
ests between Washington and Peking and Moscow and might under-
mine American political support for a continuing U.S. security role
in the world.
It would be better to find some magic diplomatic formula that could
reconcile all parties in Vietnam in a free and democratic process. No
civil war has been settled by political compromise. Every president —
even President Nixon's generous terms when measured b}^ the standard
of nation-to-nation negotiations cannot resolve the hatreds and stakes
of a civil war. Civil warring parties will not risk their lives and their
lifelong aspirations in the throw of some electoral dice. Elections
require trust and a common loyalty. These are precisely the ingredients
which are missing in a civil war.
At this point in history, the issue of morality as between the Hanoi
and Saigon regimes is not a clearcut matter. The refugees are fleeing
south, not north. But when they get south they develop no loyalty to
Saigon. It is not easy now to declaim whether Hanoi or Saigon is right
about who should rule South Vietnam. But I do believe that the United
States is not the keeper of Vietnamese morality and that it is wrong for
our Nation to perpetuate this war.
WHAT PENTAGON PAPERS DO AND DO NOT TELL US
The Pentagon papers, the matter specifically before this committee,
tell the story of how the executive branch of our government perpetu-
ated the Vietnam war. They do not tell us about the role of the Con-
gress, the news media, the political climate in our country and our
values, or the reactions of other nations. Nor do the Pentagon papers
answer the question of what kind of nation are we, the question which
I posed at the beginning of this presentation. We may well have this
answer in the coming weeks.
ONLY WAT TO RESOLVE VIETNAM DILEMMA
The only way, in my judgment, to resolve the Vietnam dilemma is
for the United States to set a date certain for the complete withdrawal
of our land, sea and air forces from the Indochina theater in return for
our prisoners of war. We must also stand ready to provide refuge for
those desiring to leave South Vietnam. This is not a good alternative —
8
the one I am proposing. There are costs that we cannot run away from,
but it is better than persisting in an endless, hopeless and tragic war.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
(Mr. Gelb's prepared statement follows :)
Statement of Leslie H. Gelb on Vietnam : Causes of the Wab and Lessons
Leaened
Mr. Chairman, distinguished members of the committee, I am honored by your
committee's invitation to present testimony on the subject of Vietnam. The pur-
pose of your hearings is history, but with respect to Vietnam, the past and the
present are irrevocably interlocked. The mind-numbing sameness of the war and
the overwhelming fact that this war is not yet history, compel us to be contempo-
rary historians with all the attendant risks.
My testimony will deal with (1) the past, specifically the causes of U.S. in-
volvement in the war, and (2) the present, specifically the lessons of the past that
bear on today.
Wars are supposed to tell us about ourselves. Are we a wise and just nation?
Or are we foolish and aggressive? Merciless or humane? Well led or mislead?
Vital or decadent? Hopeful or hopeless? Nations in war and after war, win or
lose, try to scratch away at the paste or glue or traditions or values that held
their societies together and see of what they are made. It is arguable whether a
society should indulge in such self-scrutiny. Societies are, as Edmund Burke
wrote, "delicate, intricate wholes" that are more easily damaged than improved
when subjected to the glare of Grand Inquisitors.
But in the case of our own society and the war in Vietnam, too many people
are seeking answers and are entitled to them, and many are only too eager to
fill in the blanks. The families and friends of those who were killed and
wounded will want to know whether it was worth it after all? Intellectuals will
want to kno>v "why Vietnam"? Men seeking and holding political ofiice will
demand to Know who was responsible? The answers to these questions will
themselves become political facts and forces, shaping the United States role
in the world and our lives at home for years to come.
i. causes of the war : the range of explanations
Central to this inquiry is the issue of causes of U.S. involvement in Vietnam.
I have found eight discernible explanations advanced in the Vietnam literature.
Different authors combine these explanations in various ways, but I will keep
them separate for the purpose of analysis. I will, then, sketch by own position.
1. The arrogrance of power
This view holds that a driving force in American envelopment in Vietnam was
the fact that we were a nation of enormous power and like comparable nations
in history, we would seek to use this power at every opportunity. To have power
is to want to employ it, is to be corrupted by it. The arrogance derives from the
belief that to have power is to be able to do anything. Power invokes right and
justifies itself. Vietnam was there, a challenge to this power and an opportunity
for its exercise, and no task was beyond accomplishment.
There can be no doubt about this strain in the behavior of other great powers
and in the American character. But this is not a universal law. Great powers, and
especially the United States have demonstrated self-restraint. The arrogance
of power, I think, had more to do with our persisting in the war than with
our initial involvement. It always was difficult for our leaders back in Wash-
ington and for operatives in the field to believe that American resources and
ingenuity could not devise some way to overcome the adversary.
2. Bureaucratic politics
There are two, not mutually exclusive, approaches within this view. One
has it that national security bureaucrats (the professionals who make up the
military services, civilian Defense, AID, State, and the CIA) are afflicted with
the curse of machismo, the need to assert and prove manhood and toughness.
Career advancement and acceptability within the bureaucracy depended on
showing that you were not afraid to propose the use of force. The other ap-
9
proach has it that bureaucrats purposefully misled their superiors about the
situation in Vietnam and carefully constructed policy alternatives so as to cir-
cumscribe their superiors, those forcing further involvement in Vietnam.
The machismo phenomenon is not unknown in the bureaucracy. It was difficult,
if not damaging, to careers to appear conciliatory or "soft". Similarly, the con-
striction of options is a well-known bureaucratic device. But, I think, these ap-
proaches unduly emphasize the degree to which the President and his immediate
advisers were trapped by the bureaucrats. The President was always in a posi-
tion to ask for new options or to exclude certain others. The role of the
bureaucracy was much more central to shaping the programs or the means used
to fight the war than the key decisions to make the commitments in the first
place.
S. Domestic politics
This view is quite complicated, and authors argue their case on several dif-
ferent levels. The variants are if you were responsible for losing Vietnam
to communism, you would: (a) lose the next election and lose the White House
in particular; (b) jeopardize your domestic legislative program, your influence
in general, by having to defend yourself constantly against political attack;
(c) invite the return of a McCarthyite right-wing reaction; and (d) risk under-
mining domestic support for a continuing U.S. role abroad, in turn, risking dan-
gerous probes by Russia and China.
There can be no doubt, despite the lack of supporting evidence in the Penta-
gon Papers, about the importance of domestic political considerations in both the
initial commitment to and the subsequent increase in our Vietnam involvement.
Officials are reluctant, for obvious reasons, to put these considerations down in
writing, and scholars therefore learn too little about them. It should also be noted
that domestic political factors played a key part in shaping the manner in which
the war was fought — no reserve call-ups, certain limitations on bombing target-
ting, paying for the war, and the like.
If. Imperialism
This explanation is a varient of the domestic politics explanation. Proponents
of this view argue that special interest groups maneuvered the United States
into the war. Their goal was to capture export markets and natural resources at
public expense for private economic gain.
The evidence put forward to support this "devil theory" has not been persuasive.
Certain groups do gain economically from wars, but their power to drive our
political system into war tends to be exaggerated and over-dramatized.
5. Men making hard choices pragmatically
This is the view that our leaders over the years were not men who were in-
spired by any particular ideology, but were pragmatists weighing the evidence
and looking at each problem on its merits. According to this perspective, our
leaders knew they were facing tough choices, and their decisions always were
close ones. But having decided 51 to 49 to go ahead, they tried to sell and imple-
ment their policies one hundred percent.
This view cannot be dismissed out-of-hand. Most of our leaders, and especially
our Presidents, occupied centrist political positions. But Vietnam is a case, I be-
lieve, where practical politicians allowed an anti-communist world view to get
the best of them.
6. Balance of power politics
Intimately related to the pragmatic explanations is the conception which often
accompanies pragmatism — the desire to maintain some perceived balance-of-
power among nations. The principal considerations in pursuing this goal were :
seeing that "the illegal use of force" is not allowed to succeed, honoring commit-
ments, and keeping credibility with allies and potential adversaries. The under-
lying judgment was that failure to stop aggression in one place would tempt
others to aggress in ever more dangerous places.
These represent the words and arguments most commonly and persuasively
used in the executive branch, the Congress, and elsewhere. They seemed common-
sensical and prudential. Most Americans were prepared to stretch their meaning
to Vietnam. No doubt many believed these arguments on their own merits, but in
most cases, I think, the broader tenet of anti-communism made them convincing.
10
7. The slippery slope
Tied to the pragmatic approach, the conception of balance of power and the
arrogance of power, is the explanation which holds that United States involve-
ment in Vietnam is the story of the slippery slope. According to this view, Viet-
nam was not always critical to U.S. national security; it became so oyer the
years as each succeeding administration piled commitment on commitment. I^ach
administration sort of slid further into the Vietnam quagmire, not really under-
standing the depth of the problems in Vietnam and convinced that it could win.
The catchwords of this view are optimism and inadvertence.
While this explanation undoubtedly fits certain individuals and certain
periods of time, it is, by itself, a fundamental distortion of the Vietnam experi-
ence From the Korean War, stated American objectives for Vietnam were con-
tinuously high and absolute. U.S. involvement, not U.S. objectives, increased
over time. Moreover, to scrutinize the range of official public statements and the
private memos as revealed in the Pentagon Papers makes it difficult to argue
that our leaders were deceived by the enormity of the Vietnam task before them.
It was not necessary for our leaders to believe they were going to win. It was
sufficient for them to believe that they could not afford to lose Vietnam to
communism.
8. Anti-Communism
The analysts who offer this explanation hold that anti-communism was the
central and all-pervasive fact of U.S. foreign policy from at least 1947 until the
end of the sixties. After World War II, an ideology whose very existence seemed
to threaten basic American values had combined with the national force of first
Russia and then China. This combination of ideology and power brought our
leaders to see the world in "we-they" terms and to insist that peace was in-
divisible. Going well beyond balance of power considerations, every piece of
territory became critical, and every beseiged nation, a potential domino. Com-
munism came to be seen as an infection to be quarantined rather than a force
to be judiciously and appropriately balanced. Vietnam, in particular, became
the cockpit of confrontation between the "Free World" and Totalitarianism ; it
was where the action was for 20 years.
In my opinion, simple anti-communism was the principal reason for United
States involvement in Vietnam. It is not the whole story, but it is the biggest
part.
As of this point in my own research, I advance three propositions to explain
why, how, and with what expectations the United States became involved in the
Vietnam war.
First, U.S. involvement in Vietnam is not mainly or mostly a story of step by
step, inadvertent descent into unforeseen quicksand. It is primarily a story of
why U.S. leaders considered that it was vital not to lose Vietnam by force to
Communism. Our leaders believed Vietnam to be vital not for itself, but for what
they thought its "loss" would mean internationally and domestically. Previous
involvement made further involvement more unavoidable, and, to this extent,
commitments were inherited. But judgments of Vietnam's "vitalness" — begin-
ning with the Korean War — were sufficient in themselves to set the course for
escalation.
Second, our Presidents were never actually seeking a military victory in Viet-
nam. They were doing only what they thought was minimally necessary at each
stage to keep Indochina, and later South Vietnam, out of Communist hands.
This forced our Presidents to be brakemen, to do less than those who were urg-
ing military victory and to reject proposals for disengagement. It also meant
that our Presidents wanted a negotiated settlement without fully realizing
(though realizing more than their critics) that a civil war cannot be ended by
political compromise.
Third, our Presidents and most of their lieutenants were not deluded by opti-
mistic reports of progress and did not proceed on the basis of wishful thinking
about winning a military victory in South Vietnam. They recognized that the
steps they were taking were not adequate to win the war and that unless Hanoi
relented, they would have to do more and more. Their strategy was to persevere
in hope that their will to continue — if not the practical effects of their actions-
would cause the Communists to relent.
With your permission, Mr. Chairman, I would like to enter into the record
of my testimony the article in which I develop these propositions.
11
II. LESSONS LEABNED
President Nixon may no longer be devoted to simple anti-communism as the main
reason for pursuing the Vietnam war. His administration has done much to rid
the public debate of the old cold war cliches. The President's speech of April 30,
however, in which he frequently invoked the •'communist'' threat does raise
suspicions about his change of thinking. Nevertheless, President Nixon has, for
the most part, justified continuation of the war along two lines : first, that "the
right way out of Vietnam is crucial to our changing role in the world, and the
peace in the world" ; and second that losing would produce a "nightmare of
recrimination" at home, undermining political support for U.S. interests abroad.
From my vantage point, the central task before this Committee is to evaluate
the President's rationales on their merits, of course, but also against the lessons
we should have learned from twenty-five years of war in Vietnam.
Lesson one concerns the Saigon Government and military forces. They always
get better, but they never get good enough. The current North Vietnamese
offensive, whatever the immediate results, shows once again that the Saigon
forces cannot defend themselves without massive American assistance. Ke-
gardless of what can be said about the improvement and bravery of the Saigon
forces, one simple fact obscures all the rest — a North Vietnamese force of some
100,000 men is fighting and beating a 1 million plus South Vietnamese army backed
up by about 800 tactical air sorties per day. Something is wrong somewhere.
Something always has been wrong.
The lesson is that military power without political cohesiveness and support
is an empty shell. Americans can have great sympathy for the many non-com-
munist South Vietnamese who do not want to be ruled by the communists. Yet,
these groups never have been able to submerge their own difference into a single,
unified purpose and gather support from the peasant masses. Most recently, the
Thieu regime has gained in stability but not in legitimacy. Without this legit-
imacy, and the quest for it seems never-ending, the Saigon regime perpetually will
require American support.
Lesson two concerns the Hanoi Government. While annual hints and predictions
have it that the North Vietnamese are about to expire, their will to fight seems
undiminished and they keep coming back. It is not necessary to glorify Hanoi
to face this fact. The brutality of Hanoi's methods of warfare have matched, if
not exceeded, Saigon's. And certainly, Hanoi has received massive doses of aid
from the Soviet Union and China — although only a fraction of the aid the United
States has given to Saigon. But something has gone right for them somewhere.
The lesson is, I believe, that time and determination are on the side of the ele-
mental tide of nationalism, and that the leadership in Hanoi always has sym-
bolized this basic political force. To be sure, the efficiency. But efficient authoritar-
ianism is not the principal reason for Hanoi's success. In the past, dictatorial
regimes have fallen under far less pressure than has been absorbed by Hanoi.
The only satisfactory explanation is that at least for its own people and for a
substantial minority in South Vietnam, Hanoi still stands for nationalism and
independence.
Lesson three comes back to the nature of the war itself. The war in Vietnam
was and is a civil war and a war for national independence. The central question
of who shall rule Vietnam would have been settled on just these terms long ago
had it not been for the intervention of outside powers. Whenever one Vietnamese
side or the other in this conflict was in danger of losing, an outside power would
step in to redress the balance. When France and the United States increased
their efforts, Russia and China would follow suit.
The lesson, I think, is that the war never will end as long as outside powers
keep it going. This goes for Russia and China as well as the United States. But
the United States has a particular responsibility for prolonging this war. There
can be little doubt who would have won in 1945 or 1954 or 1965 had the United
States restricted its role or stayed out. There is, I feel, little doubt who would
win today. This, in turn, gives the United States an additional responsibility —
standing ready to provide asylum to all those South Vietnamese who believe
their lives would be endangered by a North Vietnamese victory. But before this
point is reached, we must face the tragic and brutal probability that more Viet-
namese will die by the continuation of the present war than will die in a blood-
letting following its conclusion.
We can attribute great principles to our involvement in Vietnam — stopping
communism, preventing falling dominoes, seeing that aggression does not suc-
ceed, protecting the fabric of U.S. foreign policy at home and abroad. But these
83-605—73— — 2
12
principles can mean only continuing death to the Vietnamese. In the end, the
struggle will be resolved, as it began, by the Vietnamese themselves.
\ "fourth lesson, related to the others, concerns bombing. In April 1954 Presi-
dent Eisenhower, backed by all the military chiefs except the Chairman, decided
that U S bombing could neither save Dienbienphu nor turn the tide ot battle
against the Vietminh nor make the Vietminh cease and desist. Over the years,
our leaders have lost sight of the basic soundness of this decision. Bombing has
not broken Hanoi's will, and there is no sign that it could. Bombing does impose
certain limitations on the movement of men and supplies, but not to low enough
levels to prevent Hanoi's carrying out its strategy. Tactical bombing is supposed
to be quite effective against conventional force operations and it can be decisive
in paricular battles, but it has not prevented Hanoi in the last months from
bringing down tanks, trucks, and heavy artillery into the South, and it cannot
ultimately do the job of ground forces.
The lesson is that more bombing will bring neither victory nor peace. More
bombins in North Vietnam would, in time, somewhat curtail Hanoi's offensive
in the South, but at the risk of once again setting back United States relations
with Russia and China and at the price of countless civilian lives. More bombing
in South Vietnam will impede Hanoi's offensive at the expense of killing and
making refugees out of hundreds of thousands of peasants. What, then, is the
purpose of such senseless slaughter ?
A fifth lesson concerns domestic dissent. Many people who participated in the
efforts of the last seven years to change our policy say that they think they were
wasting their time. I do not agree. Their opposition, and the potential threat of
greater public opposition, was a constant factor in the deliberations of Ameri-
can policy-makers during the last two Administrations.
The lesson is that dissenters may not have been powerful, but they were not
powerless. Responsible criticism, often centered in these chambers, played an
important and honorable role in preventing worse outrages from taking place
A sixth and final lesson stemming from the others concerns dealing with
dilemmas and ending the war. Given the constant goal of a noncommunist South
Vietnam since the Korean War, Vietnam has presented the United States with
a dilemma. At first, our leaders realized that there was no chance of defeating
the Vietminh unless France granted independence to Vietnam, but that if France
granted independence, she would not remain and fight the war. So, we could
not win with France and we could not win without her. Then, our leaders recog-
nized that Diem was hopelessly losing the support of the people, but at the same
time, that he represented the only hope of future political stability. So, we could
not win with Diem and we could not win without him. Later, our leaders came
to the view that the Saigon regime could not survive without massive U.S. in-
volvement, and that the North Vietnamese effort seemed able to survive despite
U.S. efforts. So again, the war could not be won with the United States nor with-
out the United States.
In full knowledge of these dilemmas, our leaders persisted nevertheless. Each
successor group of leaders thought that they might just succeed where their
predecessors had failed — or at least, that they would prevent defeat. Our leaders
plowed on for the range of reasons discussed earlier in this paper. For many
years (until the American people saw the policy was not working and began
doubting the word of their elected officials), these reasons found a generous
reception. It is not difficult to understand why proposals for U.S. disengagement
fell on deaf ears. But this is a different time, and we have, I think, new and
more sensible lenses through which to view the war.
The old rationales about nations falling like dominoes to communism and our
own nation falling into the pit of McCarthyism no longer can stand close
scrutiny. Extremists looking for scapegoats will try to make trouble, but every
indication is that the American people want out of this war. Nor should U.S.
withdrawal from Vietnam presage a return to popular isolationism. If continuing
commitment'-: elsewhere in the world are honestly explained and seem reasonable
to the American people, they have a proven record of being willing to bear inter-
national burdens. As for the fate of Vietnam being central to the credibility and
successes of all U.S. foreign policy, as President Nixon has suggested so often,
this is an improbable proposition. What wisdom is there that causes President
Nixon to link the "dignity of the office of the Presidency" to the fate of the
Saigon forces? Who still believes that any of our allies expect us to fight in-
definitely? How many of our allies were worried enough about the fate of
13
Vietnam to make a meaningful contribution to its defense? If anything, the
domino theory may now be true in reverse. That is, if we continue the war, this
act alone might jeopardize the growing pursuit of common interests between
Washington and Peking and Moscow and might undermine American political
support for a continuing U.S. security role in the world.
It would be better to find some magic diplomatic formula that could reconcile
all parties in a free and democratic process. But the pursuit of such a magic
formula in the Vietnam civil war is a dangerous illusion. No civil war has been
settled by political compromise. Even President Nixon's generous terms when
measured by the standard of nation-to-nation negotiations cannot resolve the
hatreds and stakes of a civil war. Civil warring parties will not risk their lives
and their life-long aspirations in the throw of some electoral dice. Elections re-
quire trust and a common loyalty. These are precisely the ingredients which are
missing in a civil war.
At this point in history, the issue of morality as between the Hanoi and Saigon
regimes is not a clear-cut matter. The refugees are fleeing South, not North.
But when they get South, they develop no loyalty to Saigon. It is not easy
now to declaim whether Hanoi or Saigon is right about who should rule South
Vietnam. But I do believe that the United States is not the keeper of Vietnamese
morality and that it is wrong for the United States to perpetuate this war.
The Pentagon Papers, the matter specifically before this Committee, tell the
story of how the executive branch of our government perpetuated the Vietnam
war. They do not tell us about the role of the Congress, the news media, the polit-
ical climate in our country and our values, or the reactions of other nations. Nor
do the Pentagon Papers answer the question of what kind of nation are we —
the question which I posed at the beginning of this presentation. We may well
have this answer in the coming weeks.
The only way, in my judgment, to resolve the Vietnam dilemma is for the
United States to set a date certain for the complete withdrawal of our land, sea,
and air forces in return for our prisoners of war. We must also stand ready to
provide refuge for those desiring to leave South Vietnam. This is not a good
alternative. There are costs that we cannot run away from. But it is better than
persisting in an endless, hopeless, and tragic war.
The Chairman. Thank you. Dr. Gelb. I can assure you it is only
a coincidence that you were scheduled for this very morning, but I
think what you have had to say could not have been more appropriate
to the circumstances with which we are confronted today.
We have Professor Thomson who has arrived. I think perhaps so
that we can question both of you, would you sit where you are. Dr.
Gelb, and, Mr. Thomson, would you come up and give your statement ?
Then we will proceed to questions.
While he is settling down, Dr. Gelb, there is one question that keeps
recurring there : You assert so positively, and I agree, that this is a
civil war. That is a basic assumption that the Government of the
United States has never accepted. They have always rejected the idea
that this is a civil war. I believe we will pursue that later.
Professor Thomson, we are very glad to have you this morning.
STATEMENT OF PROFESSOR JAMES C. THOMSON, JR., HARVARD
UNIVERSITY
Mr. Thomson. Mr. Chairman, I am very glad to be here. I think
you will find a certain overlap between my thoughts and those of my
friend and colleague, Mr. Gelb.
I am very grateful to testify here before your distinguished com-
mittee, sir, on the origins and the lessons of the Indochina war. T must
add, however, that I am frankly astounded to be doing so while that
war continues in yet a new phase of escalated American involvement in
14
this fifth month of the year 1972. Had I been told, as a State Depart-
ment official 10 years ago or as a National Security Council staff mem-
ber 7 years ago, that the United States would still be a Vietnam war-
participant in 1972, 1 would have been utterly incredulous. Most of my
colleagues would have been equally disbelieving.
All of us— policymakers, legislators, and citizens alike — have been
exposed by now to more data, documents, exhortations, and preach-
ments about this war than on any other unresolved crisis in our his-
tory. Let me try, therefore, to summarize very briefly my own views
on the matter.
SUMMARY OP WITNESS' VIEWS ON U.S. INVOLVEMENT
One, American participation in Vietnam hostilities is a step that
could have and should have been avoided. Once begun, it should and
could have been ended at several junctures. Today, this week, is only
the most recent of such junctures.
Two, the Vietnam region, an Asian colonial appendage, was a region
governed so badly by its French colonial rulers from the late 19th cen-
tury through 1940 that Vietnamese nationalism and Vietnamese com-
munism largely coalesced during the struggle against first France, then.
Japan, and then France again. As a result of such coalescence, such
fusion, the leadership of the Vietnamese revolution for independence
and nationhood had largely fallen under the control of long-indige-
nous Vietnamese Communists by the mid- and late-1940's. Ho Chi Minh
was the George Washington of Vietnam, whatever we may think of
his politics, though, like George Washington, he had to struggle
against loyalist pro-European elements within the bureaucracy, army
and intelligentsia.
Three, Vietnam was, further a colonial region in which the French
so delayed and bungled the opportunities for post-1945 graceful with-
drawal that they were eventually forced out by Ho Chi Minh and Gen-
eral Giap in 1954 under fairly ignominious circumstances. Moreover —
a sadly important point for our nation — they were forced out at a
time when the United States had been suddenly traumatized by the
cold war in Europe, the so-called loss of China and then the Korean
war.
A fourth point : Against this backdrop, America's progressive in-
volvement went through several very separate stages. First Washing-
ton acquiesced in the French return to Indochina and then financed the
French war there largely for reasons that had nothing at all to do with
Asia, but, rather, as Mr. Acheson and others have revealed, as the price
required to win French participation in West European defense ar-
rangements. By 1951 that price totaled nearly $4 billion. But with the
Communist victory in China, Washington developed a second ration-
ale, namely, resistance to what was wrongly perceived as monolithic
international communism — Peking and Hanoi as mere creations and
puppets of Moscow. Such a false perception was intensified by the out-
break of the Korean war and China's eventual entry into that war as
General MacArthur marched to the Yalu River and the Chinese fron-
tier. From this point on, Washington saw Chinese-directed communism
spilling out all over Asia, and Vietnam became merely one break in
the dike.
15
A fifth point: Hence, Washington's further blunder of disasso-
ciating the United States from the 1954 Geneva Accords and grad-
ually moving in to replace the French and help upset those accords,
all on the false assumption of communism's monolithic nature and
China's expansionist aims. We took such moves despite the patently
special nature and force of Vietnamese national communism, a grad-
ually escalating commitment on our part to an historical, political, and
logistical swamp that any great power should have known enough to
avoid.
A sixth general point : Hence, further, the compounding of these
initial blunders through escalatory intervention by two Administra-
tions in an unfinished Vietnamese civil war from 1961 onward, while
pretending all along that it was not a civil war. In conjunction with
these moves, policymakers sought to explain such involvement to the
American people by developing a public description of what was at
stake in Vietnam that bore little relevance to reality but created, de
facto, a new reality through what one might call rhetorical escalation ;
in other words, Vietnam became of supreme importance largely be-
cause we said it was of supreme importance.
A final point : None of this. I would add, was the result of criminal
or malevolent men, either in Washington or necessarily in Southeast
Asia. Most of it was the result of ignorance, shortsightedness, fear,
frustration, and fatigue, and the like, though ignorance, shortsighted-
ness, fear, frustration, and fatigue can, in fact, lead to and have lead to
criminal consequences.
REJOINDER OF SUFFERING IF UNITED STATES HAD NOT INTERVENED
Let me deal at once with one obvious rejoinder to the preceding cap-
sulized account. Vietnam obviously confronted American policymak-
ers with a situation where, if Washington had not intervened, a good
many innocent anti-Communists would have suffered in the course of
civil war and revolution. But even if it were argued that we should be
in the business of rescuing oppressed peoples from their compatriots
on a worldwide basis — a dubious proposition, I would suggest — I
would say that infinitely more suffering has been inflicted and con-
tinues to be inflicted today on people in both Vietnams and in Laos
and Cambodia by our intervention than would have occurred if we
hadn't intervened. Those who have warned for years of the impending
bloodbath must face the grim reality of the daily bloodbath we have
impo«ed on Indochina. Here, indeed, is one of the most striking cases
in modern history of a cure far worse than the disease.
REJOINDER OF DOMINO THEORY
As for that other recurrent rejoinder, the so-called domino theory,
such simplistic formulations are mainly a cover for slopp}' thinking.
As anyone who knows that nation's tortured history must see, Vietnam
is a special and peculiar mix of ingredients — unique, not general, and
certainly not a "test case." What happens there tells us nothing very
useful about the future anywhere else. Moreover, the consequences of
Communist success there must therefore be examined with special care
and precision ; and such examination indicates that it would not have
16
ramifications of real significance beyond the three Indochina states
already affected, except, of course, for the commonplace of what one
might call the "ripple" effect — which is a far cry from the vision of
falling dominoes.
I am convinced, however, that dominoism does contain one impor-
tant kernel of reality ; for as I review the record of our Indochina in-
volvement. I detect — as Daniel Ellsberg has put it — one crucial
domino, and perhaps the only one, that seems to have obsessed each
American President since Mr. Truman, namely, the Administration
in power in Washington. By this I mean that each President has
sensed a lesson from the Democrats' so-called loss of China in 1949
and their defeat at the polls in 1952, and has concluded that the loss
of South Vietnam to Communism will bring about his own Adminis-
tration's downfall at the next general election.
ALTERNATIVES OFFERED AT EVERT STAGE
One has heard from men in high positions at each stage of this con-
vulsive tragedy that no constructive alternative to escalation was
offered or available. The fact of the matter, however, is that at every
stage alternatives have been offered, both from inside and outside the
Government. All of them were allegedly unpalatable at the time since
they all ran the risk of a Communist takeover in South Vietnam. Yet
all of them were proved progressively more palatable in retrospect
once the opportunity was missed. There were things we could and
should have done a year ago, 2 years ago. 3, 5, 10 years ago, that are
substantially harder to do today, except perhaps that the American
people may at last be learning. They were proposed at the time and
they were rejected at each stage because the short-term price of doing
them seemed infinitely higher than the short-term price of not doing
them and continuing instead on the same course. But the long-term
price of not doing them turns out, of course, to be compounded daily
and even hourly.
ADMISSION OF ERROR AND FAILURE RECOMMENDED
How, now, can we end the Indochina war ?
In my view, the answer is fairly simple : by trying the one thing we
have not tried — honesty ; specifically, by having the greatness to admit
national error, the intelligence to act on that admission, and the com-
passion to do it quickly.
To put the matter bluntly, in some wars there is simply no substi-
tute for failure. It is high time to face the long evident truth that our
South Vietnamese clients are the losing faction of a revolutionary civil
war, could not have lasted the past decade without us, and today will
not last a week without our constant aerial and naval bombardment
of their adversaries and their own people. There may be way-stations,
even fairly enduring ones, to the ultimate outcome of Communist
domination in the south — for instance, a coalition government. But
a cold calculation of Vietnamese interests, as well as ours, should per-
suade us to acquiesce in that ultimate outcome, if necessary.
What we so desperately have needed is something no President has
had the courage to face and to tell the American people— that Viet-
17
nam was lost to Vietnamese national communism many years ago by
the French, by Americans, but mostly by Vietnamese; that nothing
short of perpetual war might retrieve that loss ( and at what cost ! ) ;
that the loss doesn't matter in terms of American security interests
and indeed has never mattered; and that an admission of error and
failure that brings peace to a shattered region is far from "national
humiliation," as Mr. Nixon once called it, but is, rather, the first step
toward national regeneration, an act of true national courage.
What would be the results of such a message from the Presidency ?
WARNINGS OF RIGHTWING BACKLASH AND NEOISOLATIONISM
We have been warned for as long as I served in government and now
by those in the present administration, of the rightwing backlash, the
new loss-of-China witch hunt that would follow such a move. We
have been warned of the headlong flight into isolationism or neoisola-
tionism that would ensure. Are these real dangers ?
The first, a backlash, seems probable in some form in the wake of
virtually any outcome short of victory. It is simply a fact of life, the
inescapable price open societies must pay for righting a major and pro-
longed wrong. But it is also very clearly containable in the present
instance, thanks largely to the overwhelming agenda of things to be
done at home and elsewhere in the world, thanks also to the media that
have brought this wars insanity into every livingroom, thanks, hope-
fully, as well, to effective executive leadership.
As for the second danger, isolationism, it seems to me highly improb-
able. We have been overinvested, overcommitted, overextended in
parts of the world, and particularly in East Asia, over the past 20
years ; indeed, the so-called Nixon doctrine wisely acknowledges that
fact. But disinvestment in one area and pullback in Asia cannot in this
day and age mean anything like what those who grew up in the 1920's
and 1930's so much fear. We are simply too globally involved — through
communications, technology, trade, travel, economic investment, diplo-
macy and, of course, our special status as a nuclear power — to return
to anything resembling the dream of Fortress America.
WHAT OFFERED FORMULA CAN DO
This is not to suggest that the formula I offer here will have easy
consequences, for there is, of course, no easy way out of our present
Southeast Asian crisis. But it can, under the right leadership, move us
gradually toward something new and something precious — a temper-
ing of our national grandiosity, an end to our special sense of benevo-
lence as a nation, an erosion of the ugly qualities that accompany such
overweaning confidence, including excessive fear of loss or failure. It
can lead, in time, toward a new national maturity, a sense that we are
only one of many and that we cannot transform the world by ourselves.
And it can lead in the process, to a new degree of candor in our gov-
ernment's relations with its own citizens and a new degree of respect by
the citizens for their government. We can thereby begin to cleanse our-
selves of the war's most debilitating poison — collective deception and
national self-deception.
18
CREATING COMMISSION TO REFLECT ON WAR RECOMMENDED
I believe that one great step toward such health, Mr. Chairman,
would be the creation of a blue-ribbon, bipartisan national commission
to reflect upon this quarter-century tragedy and to distill its lessons
for the future. I have in mind the creation by the President or, if neces-
sarv, by the Congress, of a national commission on the causes, conduct,
and consequences of the Indochina war. Such a proposal is not new,
but it does seem to me more imperative than ever that we make every
effort, to move from recrimination to reflection and understanding. I
would hope that such a commission would be given access to all archives
pertaining to the war, not merely the Pentagon study but all others
as well, and would take testimony from every level of participant.
I would suggest that it be given a substantial period of time for its
undertaking — perhaps 2 or 3 years — and I would hope that its ultimate
fundings might not merely point the finger of guilt, where appropriate,
at all levels of the decisionmaking and war- waging process but might
also recommend a general amnesty for all — for Presidents, their civil-
ian advisers and their military officials from generals down through
the ranks, and also for those whose consciences caused them to choose
jail or to flee the country rather than serve in the Vietnam war.
PRESIDENT'S MAY 8 STATEMENT COMPOUNDS TRAGEDY
Mr. Chairman, I listened to President Nixon on the television last
night, and I heard tragedy compounded.
Faced with the failure of so-called Vietnamization, the failure of
negotiations and the failure of rhetorical and military deterrence, he
confronted now the predictable and the very long predicted, a renewal
of the Vietnamese revolutionary war under the leadership of North
Veitnam's men with a cause, and the impending collapse of will among
South Vietnamese who have little or no cause. And what has he done ?
He has decreed two vital U.S. stakes in Vietnam, the one entirely
phony, and the other unachievable. He tells us that our 60,000 residual
American troops are threatened — and what better way to resolve the
problem, one might ask, than to withdraw them? And he tells us that
the 17 million South Vietnamese are in danger of being taken over by
communism, a distinct possibility and eventual probability for the past
20 years. Furthermore, he has reelevated this pitiful conflict to super-
power and global levels of potential destruction by imposing an unde-
clared blockade on North Vietnam and by moving into direct confron-
tation with the Soviet Union. Finally, he does these things, he tells
us, because no longer is merely the Presidency at stake, as he had said
last month, but our honor is at stake. He asks us, in closing, for "the
same support you have always given your President."
Mr. Chairman, the President's path is the path of national insanity.
The invocation of national honor over pathetically misjudged stakes
has boon tried before. The invocation of support for the Presidency
has been tried before. The conscious invocation of superpower colli-
sion has heretofore been carefully avoided by proud but prudent men.
But national honor is not what beleaguered Presidents define it to be;
it is greater and more enduring. And blind support for Presidents is
at the very taproot of our continuing Indochina calamity. As for con-
19
scions invocation of superpower collision, that is a course totally un-
justified by the stakes, by the history, and by the issue itself.
TWO ESSENTIAL STEPS TOWARD REAL PEACE
Once again a President has stated the choices falsely. If this Presi-
dent genuinely wants peace, if he genuinely seeks the release of our
prisoners, if he is genuinely concerned about our 60,000 remaining
troops, and if he genuinely cares about the fate of 17 million South
Vietnamese, he must take two long essential steps toward real peace :
the first, proposed 6 years ago by the late Robert Kennedy, an offer
at long last to agree to the formation of a coalition government in
South Vietnam ; and the second, proposed repeatedly by members of
this Congress, the clear and final setting of a deadline for total with-
drawal of all American forces from Indochina.
Only then can the people of Indochina begin to be relieved of the
nightmare we have helped inflict upon them; and only then can the
people of America emerge from their own far lesser nightmare.
That concludes my statement, M r. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Mr. Thomson.
COMMENDATION OF WITNESS
It is a very clear statement of the situation in which we are involved.
It is very difficult to know what to do to change the President's present
proposals. It is difficult to know where to begin. Much of what both of
you gentlemen have said we have discussed. Both of you brought it
together in a very concise and lucid manner.
COLLECTIVE INCAPABILITY OF CONFESSING ERROR
It has always puzzled me why a community such as the United
States is incapable of a confession of error, whereas, everyone making
up that community is not at all reluctant to confess error. It is a psy-
chological problem that completely baffles me.
As scholars, why is that? Can you offer an explanation of why col-
lectively we seem incapable of it?
Mr. Thomson. I would have to have deeper insight into the Amer-
ican national character to give you an answer to that.
I think as people we are fairly much like other nations, but I think
that in our self-image as a nation, among nations, we are not like other
nations. We have from the beginning of time, had a sense of our own
special mission, our own special benevolence — "a city built upon a hill,"
as one faction would call it, from the earliest davs, or as Jefferson him-
self said, a "revolution intended for all mankind."
Now, this gets you fairly up-tight in terms of external look and be-
havior. We have what the Chinese would call an excessive sense of
face.
The Chatrman. This isn't peculiar to us. The Chinese had that same
thought and still have it: don't they? They were the Middle Kingdom
and all the rest were barbarians. It is not peculiar that we think well
of ourselves. Nearly all nations, especially powerful nations, have;
haven't they ?
20
Mr. Thomson. We are a lot younger and they have been in the busi-
ness for a longer time.
The Chairman. Mr. Gelb?
Mr. Gelb. Mr. Chairman, I have a slightly different slant on this
answer than my colleague, Mr. Thomson.
I think the reason why our leaders have not admitted error on Viet-
nam is because they think they are right. I don't believe for one mo-
ment that President Nixon is being a political opportunist about this
war. I think, much more dangerously, he believes in what he is doing.
He really sees that the fall of Vietnam will lead to the collapse of U.S.
foreign policy abroad, the undermining of political support of that
policy at home. When he says that it would be easier for him to an-
nounce withdrawal, I think he is showing a recognition of the fact
that most Americans want him to withdraw, but he is asserting his own
judgment about the "vitalness" of Vietnam against, I think, the will of
many Members of Congress and the majority of the American people.
NO CONSULTATION WITH SENATE ABOUT PRESIDENT'S DECISION
The Chairman. It is rather curious. In this instance yesterday, so far
as I know, no member of the Senate was consulted in any respect about
the president's decision. I can't speak for the House. We were told of
it at 8 :00 o'clock last night in a very brief statement just prior to his
announcement. It is a very unusual way for a country which pro-
fesses to be a democracy to conduct its affairs.
There is still the puzzle of what to do about it because every evidence
that has come to my attention is that the American people feel this
ought to be terminated and terminated soon.
PURPOSE OF COMMISSION
Mr. Thomson, you don't mean your idea of a commission that would
study 2 or 3 years as a contribution to the ending of the war ; do you ?
It is to overcome the alleged evil effects of the ending of the war, I
assume ?
Mr. Thomson. That is correct, to try to defuse the issue and to draw
lessons from the issue.
The Chairman. It could not contribute
Mr. Thomson. It could not contribute to an ending of the war — un-
less the war is still going on 5 years from now, in which case its find-
ings might help. I trust we won't be in that situation.
DIFFICULTY OF ADJUSTING TO NEW CIRCUMSTANCES
The Chairman. Of course, the occurrences of last night have ob-
viously upset all of us, I suppose, and our ideas of how this committee
study was to proceed. It is a little difficult for me to adjust to these
new circumstances so quickly. All of us are struggling, including my-
self, and other members of the Senate. We have had two or three cau-
cuses withm the last few days, and there is another one for this after-
noon, to consider this very question of what can be done to persuade our
admmist ration to move in a different direction. In view of the speech
last night, I suppose, I can think of nothing to do.
21
VALUE OF PROPOSED WITHDRAWAL COUPLED WITH CEASEFIRE
Do either of you gentlemen have any suggestion, under present cir-
cumstances, of what might contribute to a significant move? Do you
feel there is any value whatever in the proposal, which he seemed to
make, of a withdrawal in 4 months coupled with a ceasefire^ 1 he
ceasefire has always been unacceptable to the Vietnamese. Both ot you
have studied this matter at great length.
It has been my understanding, in view of their experience, particu-
larly in 1954 at Geneva, that they will not accept a military ceasefire
and will not stop the military activities prior to a political agreement
on the future of Vietnam.
Do you agree with that or not, or would you discuss that {
Mr. Gelb. That accords with my judgment, Mr. Chairman.
I think every indication we have from the past is that the leaders in
Hanoi regard a ceasefire as an indication that they have achieved their
goals rather than as a means of achieving their goals. There are several
reasons which they have presented for opposition to a ceasefire. One is
that in the area of a ceasefire where Saigon forces have control, their
cadres, their supporters, would come under grave threat from the Sai-
gon Government.
Second, they don't want to lose the military initiative that comes
from an offensive, And, finally, and most importantly in the current
context, from their point of view they see Saigon forces as unraveling;
and to declare or accept a ceasefire at this point in time would run
against their military interests in that regard.
RESPONSIBILITY OF CONGRESS BETWEEN NOW AND ELECTION
You made another point, Mr. Chairman, that I would like briefly to
respond to. I am under no illusion that President Nixon would accept
the kind of proposals that Jim Thomson and I have been talking about
this morning and the members of the Senate have been talking about
for years. He wouldn't ; he will persist in this course. If there is any
chance of ending this before the next election, I think it can only be
ended here in the Congress. Congressmen and Senators have for years,
in my judgment, hidden behind the President on the Vietnam war.
They go along with whatever he was saying and doing. He knew best ;
he had all of the facts. If it went wrong, it would be his fault. But I
think as in many occasions in the past, if the war continues, it will be
as much the responsibility of Congressmen and Senators who did not
oppose the President as it is the responsibility of the President.
Mr. Thomson. I would heartily endorse what Mr. Gelb just said, Mr.
Chairman. The President asked us last night to support the President.
I think a higher obligation is to support the well-being of the country,
and here the people can help, but the Congress has the major responsi-
bility between now and election day.
ACCEPTABILITY OF CEASEFIRE TO HANOI SECONDARY
Mr. Gelb. One further point on ceasefire, sir : One can't be categori-
cal about what Hanoi will do or will not do. We can't get inside their
minds and we know very little abont how they operate, what their
22
political processes are. It is possible that if in the course of the next
few weeks North Vietnamese forces captured Hue, and Kontum, a
ceasefire might be acceptable to them; we cant know. But the thing
that concerns me very deeply is that ceasefire is another one of those
reeds, another one of those straws, that reasonable men in this coun-
try—reasonable men grasp at to say, "Let's go a little longer; lets
see if the President can do it this time." I don't think we should hinge
our involvement in this war or a lack of interest in this war— our more
important interests are elsewhere— on whether or not Hanoi is going
to accept a ceasefire. That has got to be a second matter to a definition
of where our own interests really lie.
AREA OF APPLICATION OF PROPOSED WITHDRAWAL
Mr. Thomson. I would add that Mr. Nixon's exit after_4 months
applies, according to his language, only to Vietnam. He did not say
withdrawal of forces from Indochina. He said from Vietnam.
Mr. Gelb. I think he did say from Indochina.
Mr. Thomson. My impression is to the contrary, but we can check
it out.
The Chairman. I think it was ; he said Vietnam. I don t believe he
said Indochina, but we can check that.
FAVORABLE REPLY FROM HANOI NOT LIKELY
Do either of you think that the offer of a military ceasefire and
return of our POW's in return for withdrawal of 4 months is^ likely
to be received favorably ? You do not think that this is likely to induce
a favorable reply from Hanoi ?
Mr. Gelb. Judging from their responses to similar kinds of offers
in the past, I would say no.
POSSIBILITY OF UNITED STATES AND RUSSIAN AGREEMENT
The Chairman. What would be your response to the thought that
the speech is a genuine offer to get out in 4 months, if the Russians will
intercede to spare them, we will say, what can be called a defeat or
a humiliation ? Is there any language and is there anything to suggest
to you that there has been some kind of agreement between our Gov-
ernment and the Russians with regard to that ?
Mr. Gelb. I would say there is an indication that there is no agree-
ment. At the conclusion of President Nixon's speech last night, he
issued a direct warning to the Soviet Union and had Henry Kissinger
in his most recent secret trip to Moscow been able to gain Russian
acquiescence or passiveness in that policy. I don't think the President
would have gone so far out of his way to try to put the Soviet Union
in the very box, prior to this summit meeting, which he himself says
he would never tolerate. He is asking them to accept the humiliation
which he believes that the United States never could.
DISTINCTION CONCERNING STOPPING ACTS OF FORCE AND WITHDRAWAL
The Chairman. For the record, according to the morning paper, his
wording was: "and once the internationally supervised ceasefire has
begun, we will stop all acts of force throughout Indochina.
23
"At that time we will proceed with a complete withdrawal of all
American forces from Vietnam within 4 months."
So there is a distinction here. Pie will stop the acts of force, which,
I assume, will include the bombing in Laos and it does not say with-
draw our forces. Perhaps it is on the basis that we have no Americans
other than the very few advisers in Cambodia and those who super-
vise or train and look after the army in Laos. I don't know what the
current figures are. At one time we had about 1,000 in Laos sort of giv-
ing logistic support and direction to the Vang Pao army.
QUESTION OF AGREEMENT OR ACQUIESCENCE FROM MOSCOW ILLUSORY
Mr. Gelb. Mr. Chairman, just one further word on this.
The Chairman. Yes.
Mr. Gelb. Your question about whether President Nixon has any
agreement or acquiescence from Moscow in this current war — this is
again one of those reeds and straws that one hears bandied about, par-
ticularly in this city of Washington, to give the President more time.
"He must have something up his sleeve. He must have an ace up there;
he is going to play it. Let's not criticize; let's give him a few more
months to play that ace." There has never been such an ace before ; it
is another one of those illusions that make us persist in this war.
encouraging disassociation from actions within administration
suggested
Mr. Thomson. Mr. Chairman, you asked what could be done, and we
tossed the ball back into the laps of the Congress. I do have one further
suggestion.
The Chairman. I was going to come back to that, but go ahead.
What is it?
Mr. Thomson. And I propose it with some hesitation, as one who
tarried in government for a considerable period of time after escala-
tion in the belief that if one stayed in government one could keep
worse things from happening.
My suggestion is that an effort be made, since this feels very much
like a one-man decision, to encourage men of conscience within this
Administration to depart from the Administration as would happen
in any parliamentary government elsewhere, to break ranks, to leave
the government, to give their message to the people. I think that with
this kind of disassociation of men of conscience from actions of this
sort could to some degree act as a brake against a besieged President. It
could have other effects as well, and that is why I propose it with some
trepidation — also because so many of us did not do it in the past ; but
perhaps current incumbents should learn from the past.
The Chairman. Isn't that practice much more common in a parlia-
mentary system than in our system ? The people in important posi-
tions in the parliamentary system are usually men with political power
of their own, that is, members of the House of Lords ; whereas, it is
not true under our Government. The much more important relation-
ship there is that the House of Commons can do something about anv
government.
24
WHAT CONGRESS CAN DO
I was going to come back to what the Congress can do.
We have, as you know, pending the so-called Case-Church amend-
ment which is very similar to the McGovern-Hatfield amendment,
and the motion by the Senator from Mississippi to strike that pro-
posal from the pending authorization bill. There has been a great deal
of discussion about what to do about it. We passed the Mansfield
amendment, to which you referred, and which was wholly ineffective.
The President simply dismissed it by saying it is not his policy and he
would not be governed by it. So you come down to what the Congress
can do. It has passed that amendment which was an expression of
policy. The present amendment says cut off the funds after De-
cember 31.
There is very little probability, I would say, of that actually being
enacted into law even though the Senate passed it. The bill would
be vetoed. I assume, if the President really believed what he said last
night and it would be a miracle if we could get two-thirds of both
Houses for any such proposal as that.
Aren't we really reduced to an appeal to public opinion and thereby
as a political leader the President would respond to it in the near
future ? Even if we passed such an amendment as you mentioned, and
it became the law, it would be a long time before it took effect. As a
matter of fact, there are so many arms in the pipeline, so much armed
strength now deployed in the area that as long as the armed forces
obev orders. I don't know what the Congress can do.
We have all thought about this at great length. We have all made
speeches ; we voted for various restrictions. I proposed, and there was
enacted, a restriction upon the use of foreign troops in Laos. They
have evaded that. By calling them volunteers and by semantic trick-
ery, the restrictions are evaded. They can invent new names for bomb-
ing ; they call it protective reaction strikes as if they were something
different. It is a great dilemma to the Congress, although, I am bound
to say that the Congress as a whole has not yet, except in the Mansfield
amendment and that was a most reluctant compromise in conference,
evidenced a clear majority directly contrary to this or the preceding
President's views. In most of the contests of strength and votes we
have had, those of us who opposed the war have been on the losing
side by a few votes. We have never had a clear majority except in the
Mansfield amendment which is only an expression of policy.
I would like to know what do you think the Congress can do ? What
do you recommend that the Congress do ?
Mr. Gelb. I would say pass Church-Case. I would expect in the
case the Congress did, the President would veto the bill in which case
I would again suspect that your judgment is right that it would be
nearly impossible to get the two-thirds to override. But I think that
act by the Congress, Congress' expression of its own majority will,
would be an important political force in the country and would bring
the issue of ending the war down to the next Presidential election.
I would hate to see it go on that long. There is no need for it. But if
that is the case, then I think the central issue of that next election
must be whether or not the United States will set a date certain for
getting out of Vietnam, and that will be the public's decision.
20
The Chairman. Is that your view ?
Mr. Thomson. I would certainly endorse what Mr. Gelb says. You
do not stop the killing in the war, as the President put it last night,
by cutting off arms to only one side. If you genuinely want to stop
the killing, you cut off arms to both sides, and that involves cutting
off appropriations on this side if the President himself will not cease
the pipeline flow.
That is a kind of symmetry that makes sense, although obviously
the President would not buy it. It strikes me that if, as you say, Mr.
Chairman, public opinion needs to be brought to bear on this matter,
public opinion can and should be expressed through the Congress in
enacting such legislation with a degree of urgency that never existed
prior to last night.
The Chairman. That is the only vehicle, of course, that we have
immediately before us, which is the Case-Church amendment, and
whether or not it would be used, I do not know.
EFFECT OF PRESIDENT^ STATEMENT ON PROSPECTS FOR MOSCOW MEETING
"What would your judgment be as to the effect of the statement last
night upon the prospects for the meeting in Moscow to proceed on
schedule ?
Mr. Gelb. We are involved in a guessing game here, perhaps, with
less, perhaps with as much knowledge, as the Administration, but
one calculation, I think, that is important, it will be very difficult,
if not impossible, for the Soviet Union, to mount such force in the
Vietnam theater of operations to challenge the quarantine. If that
judgment is correct, the Soviet Union will then have to think of other
ways in which it can compensate for this act in order not to put itself
in a position of weakness before the summit, a position of weakness
which President Nixon himself says he cannot tolerate.
I doubt that the Soviet Union would stir up crises in the Middle
East and Berlin, but I would not be surprised if there were a battle
raging in the Kremlin now to call off the summit meeting.
You remember, Mr. Chairman, that back in 1968 when the Soviet
Union had invaded Czechoslovakia we had arms control talks sched-
uled with them. We called those arms control talks off. It is an inter-
esting precedent.
The Chairman. Do you have a comment on that, Mr. Thomson?
Mr. Thomson. I would be very surprised if the summit meeting
took place. I think one would have to recalculate the Soviet Union's
worldwide outlook and interests. I think it could only take place if
there were a tit-for-tat expression on their part between now and the
time of the summit, which is not a pleasant phenomenon to look for-
ward to.
EFFECT OF ANNOUNCED PROGRAM ON SUPPLIES TO NORTH VIETNAM
The Chairman. Are either of you gentlemen familiar with the
problem of logistics and supplies ? Do you think the announced pro-
gram will be effective in preventing substantial supplies getting into
North Vietnam from either China or Russia ? Are there any alterna-
tive ways ? What do you think about it ?
26
Mr. Gelb. From my past experience I can make some generaliza-
tions about it, but they will lack the certain specificity and currency
obviously.
I would guess that a quarantine not only of Haiphong but also of
all dozen or so major and relatively large ports on the North Viet-
nam east coast could be pretty well effective. It would be difficult to
get boats of any size, ships of any size, through that quarantine.
The President also announced — that does not mean some cannot get
through, in smaller craft — the President also announced that he has
authorized the bombing of rail links from China.
Now. on the basis of studies that were done in the Pentagon in the
past, it was estimated that even if you bombed those links you would
only reduce through-put from China into North Vietnam by about
50 percent. I have no independent judgment on that. I am just repeat-
ing. That means that if an air strike against a railway is effective, it
only takes the equivalent of several hours to fully repair or to repair
that rail link sufficiently to allow trains to proceed on it the next
night.
There will be, of course — there are, of course, roads and trucks and
there are, of course, men and their backs, and the North Vietnamese
have carried on under more adverse circumstances than the situation
they are now facing.
It is very doubtful, in my untutored judgment, that this quarantine
can have an effect on the battles immediately in progress in South
Vietnam ; how much of an effect the whole campaign that President
Nixon has authorized will have in the coming months remains to be
seen. But I doubt very much that it will be sufficient to get North
Vietnam to drop its aspirations in this war.
The Chairman. Do you have any comment on that point ?
Mr. Thomson. No ; that is not an area with which I am familiar.
SOVIET POWER TO PERSUADE NORTH VIETNAM
The Chairman. The implied assumption behind this policy of
blockade would seem to be that the Soviets have the power to persuade
North Vietnam to relent or to behave. From your study of the past
and the Pentagon papers, what do you think of that? Is there any
historical evidence that North Vietnam can be controlled by advice
from Moscow?
Mr. Gelb. I don't think there is evidence that they can be controlled
by Moscow. I think we have learned something ourselves of about
how difficult it is to control client states and we have often found our-
selves in the position of the tail wagging the dog. But it is true, so far
as we know, that at the 1954 Geneva conference and again in the
Geneva conference on Laos in 1962, that the Soviet Union and China
did play some part in getting Hanoi to back off. Whether thej' could
do the same now, your guess is as good as mine.
The Chairman. There is the further, very difficult question of
whether they would be inclined to use their influence even if they
had it. Do you sen anything in this proposal that would incline the
Rus^inns to u^o whatovor influence they had to accept a cease-fire?
Mr. Gelb. Tf humiliation is the way to get the Soviet Union to twist
Hanoi's arms, then President Nixon's proposals will be successful.
27
Mr. Thomson. It does strike me, Mr. Chairman, that the North
Vietnamese have demonstrated for 25 years, going on 28, their deter-
mination to go on with their unfinished revolution and unresolved
civil war, national unification and the like, through thick and thin,
periodically bending very slightly as they did at the Geneva and Laos
conferences. And because of their bending at the 1954 Geneva Con-
ference, I might add, when they settled for half a loaf with the expec-
tation of receiving the other half 2 years later, because of their experi-
ence with that move, and its unfortunate consequences from their
vantage point, I think they are much less prone to be pushed around
by their allies any more than they are pushed around by their adver-
saries. These are very determined people with a strong sense of mission
and they have proved their determination and their sense of mission
for a quarter of a century.
CONDITIONS UNDER WHICH CHINESE WOULD INTERVENE
The Chairman. Do you foresee, Mr. Thomson, any conditions under
which the Chinese would intervene in the war ?
Mr. Thomson. It was my experience in government, and I see no
reason to modify our position then, that the one tripwire that would
bring China into a war in which it did not want to intervene, where
its presence was not desired by its ally, would be any clear and present
threat to the regime in North Vietnam. In other words, any sign of an
effort to overthrow and displace that basically friendly regime by
a hostile force on China's borders. So China would come in only to
protect Chinese frontiers and security.
EFFECT OF FALL, OF KONTUM AND HUE
The Chairman. One last question before I call on my colleagues:
What would you foresee being the result of the fall of Kontum and
Hue ? Do you think that would have a very significant effect upon the
morale and spirit of the South Vietnamese armies ?
Mr. Thomson. I myself would think the answer was yes. Reports
out of Saigon indicate that the unfreezing of Vietnamese politics,
which have been frozen solid by the heavy American presence, plus
the lid of the Thieu regime, would take place as it becomes more
clear that the Thieu regime is in trouble.
There are elements in South Vietnam, as we have always known,
that are neutralist, anti-Thieu, pro-Communist and the like, many
different kinds of tendencies that have had to remain very silent during
these years of deep freeze. As they begin to see the wind blowing in a
different direction, they might well emerge and you might even get
some restlessness within the armed forces of South Vietnam itself
toward the top.
The Chairman. Do you have any comment on that before I pass to
my colleagues ?
Mr. Gelb. President Thieu himself has said that Hue and Kontum
are of critical importance to the political and military viability of his
country.
83-605—73-
28
DIFFERENCE IX NEGOTIATIONS IF GENERAL MINH REPLACED PRESIDENT
THIEU
The Chairman. Do you think if he were replaced by General Minh,
it would make any difference? . .
Mr. Gelb. Make any difference in negotiations i
The Chairman. Yes.
Mr. Gelb. Quite possibly. The ^orth \ letnamese, as you know, have
insisted, so far as we know publicly, on the removal only of President
Thieu prior to the election process. If they are serious about that, the
exchange of power from Thieu to Minh could be a removal of a stum-
bling block.
The Chairman. Senator Muskie ?
Senator Muskie. I assume a lot of ground has already been covered
this morning.
The Chairman. Thev were very excellent statements, I must say.
Senator Muskie. There are certain key questions I would like to ask,
and I apologize if they duplicate ground already covered.
RUSSIAN OPTIONS IN RESPONSE TO PRESIDENT'S INITIATIVE
First of all, what do you see as the Russians' option in response to the
President's initiative ?
Mr. Gelb. Well, I can see a Russian President Nixon getting up and
saying he has three options : immediate unilateral humiliating retreat
on the one hand, an all-out nuclear war on the other hand, and the third
course of persisting in cold war relations, dropping the summit meet-
ing and going back to where we were, as President Nixon so aptly put
it, to the dark ages.
Senator Muskie. With respect to the immediate military or naval
problem that the Russians now face — the mining — what do you see as
the possible tactical options that the Russians have ?
Mr. Gelb. I think they have very few, if any, tactical options in the
theater of operations. The United States maintains an enormous con-
ventional force superiority in the area, sea power, air power, and it is
doubtful — I could be wrong and I wouldn't want to risk this kind of
situation in the first place — but I think it is doubtful that the Soviet
Union would try to challenge that military superiority in Vietnam
itself.
But if I could expand on that, Senator Muskie, the thing that trou-
bles me about this is that the President of the United States would put
everything at risk. I don't know, nor does anyone know, whether it will
work or whether it won't work in the sense of effectively shutting off a
good deal of supplies coming into the country ; but the point is, he is
willing to risk a SALT agreement, he is willing to risk growing rela-
tions with the Chinese, in pursuit of some interest in Vietnam that I
think most Americans have long come to discard as nonsensical and
morally wrong.
Senator Muskie. I share that view, but I wondered whether there is
an alternate route of supply available to the Russians that could effec-
tively supplant this route, if indeed they accept the mining operation
and accept the conclusion that they cannot or do not want to challenge
that operation to maintain that route of supply. Is an overland route
effectively available to them?
29
Mr. Gelb. There still would be four routes available to them, Sena-
tor : One, they could bring equipment in by small craft into ports and
beaches. Secondly, even if we effectively interdict the rail lines, that,
according to studies that have been done in the past, would reduce
through-put, rail through-put, only by about 50 percent; the rail lines
can be repaired in several hours.
Third, you can bring supplies in through by truck and road.
Fourth, they can carry it on their backs as they have often done
in the past.
president's conditions for lifting mining
Senator Muskie. Do you regard the President's conditions for lift-
ing the mining as a softening of his peace terms ?
Mr. Gelb. It is a variation of his previous proposal. I don't think
it is a softening because he did in other parts of his speech refer to
his previous proposals as if they were still current in this proposal.
Jim — Mr. Thomson — may have something to add to that.
Mr. Thomson. I did not detect a major softening. I detected a
shuffling; there was the significant suggestion that after 4 months we
will withdraw American forces from Vietnam. He does not say Indo-
china.
Senator Muskie. What is the significance of that difference in your
judgment?
Mr. Thomson. Well, it involves the possibility of keeping large
forces off the coast, in Laos and Cambodia and, of course, in Thailand,
from here to eternity.
Senator Muskie. Well, do you regard the lack of withdrawal of all
forces coupled with the new language, "all acts of force," as meaning
the withdrawal of air power and naval power as well as ground com-
bat forces ?
Mr. Thomson. Subsiding of the violence, of acts of violence, is not
the same thing as withdrawing the instruments of violence. I would
be untrusting, were I on the other side, as to how long this subsiding
would be in order, and what new moves might be taken once one had
laid down one's arms, more or less.
Senator Muskie. But if the other side were willing to interpret
that new language as meaning the possibility of withdrawal of the
instruments of air power as well as the use of air power, and the
instruments of naval power as well as the use of naval power?
Mr. Thomson. From all of the region? That would be a step for-
ward, a major
Senator Muskie. Would you regard that as a sufficient additional in-
ducement as to offer some encouragement that the other side might
respond positively to the conditions the President laid down last
night ?
Mr. Thomson. I find that very hard to guess.
Mr. Gelb. The major difference, if it is a difference, is President
Nixon's statement that he would end acts of force throughout Indo-
china. In the past he has limited that to Vietnam. I don't think, in my
judgment, that this would be sufficient to get North Vietnam to ac-
cept' President Nixon's other proposals, which still call for mutual
withdrawal of forces, and an electoral process which the North Viet-
namese have not chosen to risk in the past, and I doubt would choose
to risk in the present.
30
Senator Mtjskie. Is it fair to summarize your reaction in this way:
that the President's initiative last night represents more stick than
carrot ?
Mr. Gelb. Absolutely.
POSSIBILITY OF ACCEPTANCE OF WITHDRAWAL DATE FOR POW RETURN
Senator Mtjskie. What is your assessment of the possibility that
North Vietnam, the other side, would accept the proposal of a with-
drawal date conditioned only upon the return of prisoners at this
stage ?
Mr. Gelb. Here, again, as I mentioned to Senator Fulbright, we
know very little about the workings of the Hanoi leadership : they have
publicly said that they would not accept the simple proposal of setting
a date and returning our prisoners. They have publicly said that they
also want a coalition government excluding President Thieu. They
also want a political settlement. I don't know whether that is — that
proposal and that statement — is a reaction to our own unacceptable
military solutions to the problem or a real reflection of how they would
like to see the war negotiated, the end of the war negotiated.
My guess is that there is a difference between making a proposal and
accepting a proposal. It might well be difficult for Hanoi's leadership
to coalesce around the solution of seeing a date certain and returning
our prisoners than it is for them to accept that proposal if we were
to offer it. We never have; so we don't know. President Nixon has
made it appear in a number of his addresses — he has made that simple
proposal, ending of our direct involvement by a certain date in return
for prisoners, but he never has. There have always been one, two, or
five clinkers to it.
IMPACT OF PRESIDENT'S DECISION ON NEGOTIATIONS
Senator Muskie. What effect, if any, would you say the President's
decision of last night may have upon the possibility of the other side
accepting such a proposal ?
In other words, what has been the impact of last night's events
upon our negotiating position in Paris, and the negotiating position
of the Saigon Government in Paris ?
Mr. Gelb. There is a study in the Pentagon papers, Senator Muskie,
done by the CIA called the "Will to Resist." It was a study done in
1966 and again in 1067. It was the agency's views of the effectiveness of
U.S. strategic bombing in North Vietnam. They concluded that not
only was bombing ineffective in bringing Hanoi around to accepting
the United States' position, but, on the contrary, it increased their will
to resist. I see nothing in the events of the last 4 years, 5 years, then, to
believe that that judgment would be any different today.
Senator Muskie. Is it your conclusion, then, that the events of last
night have diminished the prospect for a negotiated settlement and
early end to the war ?
Mr. Gelb. I think it can only prolong the war, sir.
Senator Muskie. Is that your view ?
31
Mr. Thomson. That would be my judgment, Senator Muskie. It
seems to me that what the President did last night was to put no great
additional pressure on Hanoi other than pressures Hanoi has lived
with, experienced, or under whose shadow it has persisted. It has put
intense new pressures, pressures in terms of a possible humiliation, on
the Soviet Union.
We have no reason to believe that the Soviet Union can call the shots
in Hanoi, so I see no forward progress and I see a good deal of back-
ward progress in terms of rhetoric and, of course, in terms of an es-
calated threat of a global nature rather than regional containment of
the conflict.
POSSIBILITY OF USING AIR POWER AGAINST SOVIET SHIPPING
Senator Muskie. The President also spoke of his new policy as
including the interdiction of all movements, I take it — land, sea, and
air supplies— into North Vietnam. Does this mean, in your judgment,
an increase in the possibility that we will use air power against Soviet
shipping if it should undertake, with the aid of minesweepers, to move
across the mine barrier ?
Mr. Gelb. Well, the President did say that he would not only mine
the various harbors but also would take action to interdict ships that
entered Vietnam, North Vietnam territorial waters.
Now, whether he would open fire on them, I don't know, but I don't
want to see the United States in a position where we are risking that.
I see no conceivable objective in Vietnam that is worth that cost.
Senator Muskie. I agree with that judgment, but Ambassador Rush
this morning left open the answer to that question as to what would
happen if the Russians were to seek to sweep the mines and move
through the minefield with sweeps and presumably with shipping;
he left open that question and presumably it is open in your mind as
well?
Mr. Gelb. Yes ; it is.
Senator Muskie. Would you agree with that, Professor Thomson ?
Mr. Thomson. I would agree with that.
The Chairman. Senator Aiken ?
GENEVA ACCORDS OF 1954
Senator Aiken. I know, Mr. Thomson, you mentioned the Geneva
Accords through 1954. Are you sure of that date ?
Mr. Thomson. I beg your pardon, sir ?
Senator Aiken. The reference to the Geneva Accords in 1954 ?
Mr. Thomson. Yes, sir.
Senator Aiken. Are you sure of that date ?
Mr. Thomson. Yes, sir.
Senator Aiken. What happened in 1962 ?
Mr. Thomson. In 1962 there was a Laos conference.
Senator Aiken. What is that ?
Mr. Thomson. The Geneva agreements on Laos in 1962 ; there were
agreements on Indochina in 1954.
32
Senator Aiken. There were references, and you state that the United
States would have nothing to do with the Geneva Accords in 1954 ?
Mr. Thomson. That is right ; Ambassador Walter Bedell Smith was
instructed not to sign the accords but to issue a separate United States
and South Vietnam statement indicating that we would seek not to
upset those accords. We did not sign the agreements.
Mr. Gelb. The South Vietnamese Government, in my recollection,
did not make any pledge to honor the accords ; we did.
Senator Muskie. No country signed the accords in 1954?
Mr. Gelb. That is technically right ; the only thing that was signed
was the military arrangements between the French and the Vietminh.
Senator Aiken. By referring to Geneva Accords of 1954, you are
really referring to the Geneva conference which adopted what might,
have been called the. Accords ; is that right ?
Mr. Thomson. That is right, sir.
service performed by international control commission
Senator Aiken. I believe the International Control Commission was
set up at that time ?
Mr. Thomson. That is correct.
Senator Aiken. Can you consider that the ICC performed a valu-
able service ?
Mr. Thomson. At various junctures it performed what we call sort
of a windowpane type of service, namely, it was something that might
be busted through and it was an observer mission. It certainly did not
perform to any degree the service that was intended.
ICC PURPOSE
Senator Aiken. What was the purpose of the ICC ?
Mr. Thomson. The ICC purpose? The Control Commission was to
keep violence from breaking out, to patrol the agreements in the two
parts of Vietnam and Laos and Cambodia.
Mr. Gelb. It was to effect the military arrangements, Senator, and
very interestingly most of the violations of the arrangements reported
by the ICC wore violations by the South Vietnamese Government, not
the North Vietnamese Government.
Senator Aiken. The ICC membership was made up of a member
from Poland, India, and Canada. Have you talked with any of those
people who were members at that time?
Mr. Gelb. No, but I have read the record of the ICC proceedings
over the years, sir.
Senator Aiken. The record was prepared by the majority members
of India and Poland. I hope you realize that?
Mr. Gelb. Different recommendations were prepared by different
members. Sometimes they were unanimous; many times they were not.
Senator Aiken. What was the ICC supposed to do about refugees?
Were they supposed to help the refugees who desired to leave North
Vietnam and whom the United States helped at a later date in spite
of the opposition of Hanoi? Was the ICC supposed to help the
refugees \
Mr. Gelb. They were supposed to assist refugees, but they had no
facilities at their disposal to directly help them.
33
Hanoi's refusal to let refugees call on icc
Senator Aiken. Do you know that the Hanoi Government would
not let one single refugee come near the ICC for assistance? Do you
realize that ?
Mr. Gelb. Well over a million people left what was called the Zone
of North Vietnam to come south after the conclusion of the Geneva
Conference.
Senator Aiken. But do you know of any refugee that was permitted
to call on the ICC for assistance?
Mr. Gelb. I can't say whether it was specifically on the ICC, hut I
do know well over a million refugees moved from north to south.
HANOI GOVERNMENT'S REFUSAL OF FOOD TO NONSYMPATIIIZERS
Senator Aiken. Did you know the Hanoi Government refused to
permit food to be delivered to those people who they felt were not in
sympathy with their government?
Mr. Gelb. I wouldn't doubt that for a moment, sir, and as I said
in my statement, I don't think that the Hanoi Government has per-
formed any more morally or less brutally than the Saigon Government.
DIFFERENCE OF OPINION CONCERNING VIETNAMESE ELECTIONS
Senator Aiken. You do realize that after the Geneva conference or
the Accords, if you persist in calling it that, had been signed by all
but the United States and the South Vietnamese, it was signed by
North Vietnam under the name of the Viet Minh, who later became the
Hanoi Government? Do you realize that the next day there was some
statement issued which was not signed by anybody to the effect that it
was supposed to be a temporary arrangement and that elections would
be held ? Didn't the United States agree that elections could be held for
the people of both North and South Vietnam ? You must know that.
Mr. Gelb. Yes, sir, although the lanormsre is somewhat ambiguous.
Senator Aiken. Do you know what the difference of opinion was ?
Mr. Gelb. With respect to what, Senator Aiken ?
Senator Aiken. I might enlighten you by saying that North Vietnam
insisted that the elections be held under the auspices of the ICC. The
United States held that the elections should be held under the United
Nations' auspices. That was the difference of opinion at that time, and
that was why no elections were held. The United States refused to sign
the conference report because they held that the country should not be
divided.
IS VIETNAM ONE COUNTRY OR TWO?
In the last 2 months, I would say, North Vietnam has been insisting
there is only one country. Do you regard that as one country or two
countries?
Mr. Gelb. I regard it as one country, sir, and the military provisions
that were signed between the French and the Viet Minh in 1954 did not
provide for two countries. It provided for two military zones in which
the armies of each side would regroup.
Senator Aiken. You regard it as one country now ?
Air. Gelb. I do.
34
Senator Aiken. Then why does every Communist nation in the
world regard it as two countries — North Vietnam and South Viet-
nam— and have formal relationships with what they claim is the gov-
ernment of two countries. They do not recognize the government in
Saigon as being a legitimate government, but they do have formal
relationships with two countries ; isn't that correct %
Mr. Gelb. That is correct, sir.
Senator Aiken. Then you differ with the other 20 or so Communist
countries ?
Mr. Gelb. I have often differed with the Communist countries.
[Laughter.]
Senator Aiken. That might be a good idea. Some of them are pretty
active.
HANOI PEACE TERMS
As I understand it, Hanoi has submitted terms on which they will
agree to peace over there. There are seven phases of those terms. As I
understand it, the United States refuses to accept two of them : One,
the ouster of the Saigon Government. Do you agree that we should oust
that without delay ?
Mr. Gelb. I do not, sir.
Senator Aiken. You do not ?
Mr. Gelb. I do not.
Senator Aiken. The other term is that we shall disarm the 17 mil-
lion South Vietnamese people. Do you agree with that ?
Mr. Gelb. I do not.
president's peace proposals
Senator Aiken. You do not.
Do you agree with the peace terms or provisions on which we would
get completely out of there, which were enunciated by President Nixon
last night?
Mr. Gelb. President Nixon said that complete withdrawal
Senator Aiken. You have read his speech ?
Mr. Gelb (continuing) . In 4 months. Yes, I have.
Senator Aiken. You have read his entire statement ?
Mr. Gelb. Yes, sir. Depending upon South
Senator Aiken. Did you read his proposals for peace in Indochina ?
Mr. Gelb. Yes, sir. I have.
Senator Aiken. I would like to read it into the record because there
might be someone here who has not heard it.
First, all American prisoners of war must be returned.
Second, there must be an internationally supervised ceasefire throughout Indo-
china.
Once prisoners of war are released, once the internationally supervised ceasefire
has begun, we will stop all acts of force throughout Indochina * * *
not Vietnam, Indochina —
"*•* * and at that time we will proceed with a complete withdrawal of all
American forces from Vietnam within 4 months.
Now, these terms are generous terms. They are terms which would not require
surrender and humiliation on the part of anybody. They would permit the United
States to withdraw with honor. They would end the killing. They would bring
our POWs home. They would allow negotiations on a political settlement between
the Vietnamese themselves. They would permit all the nations which have suf-
fered in this long war * * *
35
Cambodia, Laos, North Vietnam, South Vietnam —
* * * to turn at least to the urgent works of healing and of peace. They deserve
immediate acceptance by North Vietnam.
Would you agree that those are favorable terms or not? If not, in
what way are they undesirable ?
Mr. Gelb. Well, I think by standards of negotiations between na-
tion states, those are generous terms. But this is not a war between
nation states. It is, in my judgment, a civil war and the kind of terms
that are acceptable in wars among great powers don't hold for civil
wars.
Go back and look at the experience of how civil wars have been
concluded — our own, the one in China, Greece, Malaya, the Philip-
pines— they cannot reach agreement in these wars for a political com-
promise because there is no trust, no loyalty, no confidence in the elec-
toral process. These wars are tragically settled by force of arms and by
whichever side is able to gain the most loyalty of the people.
President Nixon's proposals still don't go to that central fact. His
proposals still treat this war as if it is some sort of outpouring of a
monolithic Communist threat; that is why I don't think it is nego-
tiable.
COZtfMUXTST THREAT IX VIETXAM
Senator Aikex\ You don't consider there is any Communist threat
anyway ; do you ?
Mr. Gelb. Excuse me ?
Senator Aikex". You don't consider there is any Communist threat,
but what about
Mr. Gelb. In Vietnam ?
Senator Aikex\ In Vietnam.
Mr. Gelb. That threatens U.S. national interest in Vietnam — yes,
sir.
X'ORTII VIETXAMESE DEMAX'DED DISARMAMEXT OF SOUTH VIETNAMESE
Senator Aikex\ But you do not favor then the North Vietnamese
demand that Ave disarm the IT million South Vietnamese?
Mr. Gelb. No, I do not, sir.
Senator Aiken. You don't?
Mr. Gelb. I think if we were to set a date for the withdrawal of all
American forces and carry that out, that there would be a process of
political accommodation taking place among the South Vietnamese, a
natural process that could lead to the ultimate conclusion of the war.
Senator Aikex-. But you do know that that is the one term out of two
which the Communists insist upon our accepting as a condition for any
further discussion of the other five points ?
Mr. Gelb. That is their publicly announced bargaining position;
yes, sir.
PRESIDEX't's PROPOSALS A\D MAX\SFIELD's PROPOSALS
Senator Aiken. Yes, indeed. Let me see. You would consider the
President's proposal for peace worthless and unworkable?
Mr. Gelb. I ^on^ider them worthless and unworkable, yes, I do for
the ending of this Vietnam war.
36
Senator Aiken. You have the same opinion on the President's pro-
posals last night. Would you give that to the Mansfield-Byrd amend-
ment which is now before the Senate ?
Mr. Gelb. I agreed with the old Mansfield amendment, Senator.
Senator Aiken. Do you see any difference between the President's
proposals and the latest Mansfield proposal ?
Mr. Gelb. I do. There is no call, so far as I understand, at least in
the Church-Case bill, for a cease-fire and a cease-fire is a provision
Senator Aiken. You mean the Mansfield amendment does not re-
quire a cea se-fire ?
Mr. Gelb. Does it? Perhaps I am not as familiar with it as I
thought .
Senator Aiken. It looks to me like a clear case of highjacking the
Mansfield amendment, and it seems very reasonable.
NORTH VIETNAMESE TAKING OF QTJANGTRI
Do you feel that the United States escalated the war a month ago
and intensified it when the troops from the north came down and took
Quangtri and are now outside Hue ? Do you think that we escalated
that war at that time ?
Mr. Gelb. Not at that particular point in time, no.
Senator Aiken. Do you think Russia was involved in any way ?
Mr. Gelb. The Soviet Union is a supplier to the North Vietnamese
Government just as we are a supplier to the South Vietnamese Govern-
ment.
Senator Aiken. You wouldn't say that it was a diversionary tactic
on the part of Russia, would you, to get all attention concentrated ovo"
on that side of the world rather than the Middle East ?
Mr. Gelb. I wouldn't think so, in my judgment.
SECURITY IN THE MIDDLE EAST
Senator Aiken. Do you think the Middle East is perfectly secure ?
Mr. Gelb. No, I do not at all.
Senator Aiken. No.
Mr. Gelb. But it is another situation.
Senator Aiken. I wouldn't say either
Mr. Gelb. But it is another situation, Senator Aiken, and no matter
what the outcome in Vietnam, it seems to me, we have actions that we
can take in our national interest in the Middle East and elsewhere to
insure our interests, that the fate of those areas of the world is not de-
pendent on an outcome in Vietnam.
EFFECT OF MINING THE COAST
Senator Aiken. I am losing my time. I still say, frankly, that I don't
think that the mining of the coast is going to have any immediate effect
on the battle that is going on over there now. If North Vietnam with-
draws and tries another offensive in a year or two, it might have some
effect, but not right now, other than being part of the war of nerves
or the cold war which is going on.
37
RUSSIA SUGGESTED AS CHIEF CULPRIT
But I do believe that Russia is the principal culprit here because
they evidently have been planning this invasion over there for a year
or two. I am very suspicious that it is diversionary.
Why did Russia sail nuclear submarines where they were sure we
would see them if it wasn't to bother us ?
SHOULD PRESIDENT GO TO MOSCOW
Do you think that the President should go to Moscow ?
Mr. Gelb. Do I think he should go ? Yes, I would like to see him
g°
Senator Aiken. I think he is going unless the Russians themselves
tell him not to come, and that is that.
Mr. Thomson. Senator Aiken, may I comment very briefly I
Senator Aiken. Yes.
PREVIOUS PROPOSAL BY SENATOR AIKEN
Mr. Thomson. I just want to endorse the answers that Mr. Gelb gave
to your questions, and I would like to say, sir, that it struck me that one
of the wisest proposals made for the solution to this war was made by
you under a previous xldministration, namely, that we declare victory
and go home.
Now, what struck me last night was that the President did pre-
cisely the opposite of what you so wisely urged a while ago. He de-
clared impending humiliation and said we will stay.
Senator Aiken. May I ask why it is that none of you fellows showed
the slightest inclination to help me when I tried to get President John-
son to withdraw and why it has been only in the last 2 years that a
great many people have shown much interest in our getting out over
there ?
Mr. Thomson. A lot of us were praying for you.
Senator Aiken. Why is that ? Hardly any of you would raise a hand
to help me at that time.
Mr. Gelb. Senator, I agreed with your proposal at the time you
made it.
Senator Aiken. Yes, I say some did, but the assistance was not over-
whelming by any means. It was not
[Laughter.]
Senator Aiken (continuing). Very generous until about 2 years ago
when everybody said we have a war over there.
TROOP WITHDRAWALS
Do you approve of the withdrawing of 90 percent of the troops we
had in South Vietnam ?
Mr. Thomson. I would approve of withdrawing them all. Ninet}^
percent is not quite enough.
Senator Aiken. We were on the way; we would have withdrawn
them all by July were it not for the new offensive.
38
Mr. Thomson. Had we withdrawn them all, the President would
not have the pretext of 60,000 troops whose lives were in danger.
Senator Aiken. Last night there were only 60,000 troops remaining
and 3 years ago in the spring of 1969 there were 543,500, 1 think. There
has been a general withdrawal from Southeast Asia. I agree with you
that Asia should look after some of these things _ themselves, and,
finally, China is going to show some interest here in not promoting
war.
That is all.
The Chatrman. Senator Percy ?
Senator Percy. Mr. Chairman, I would like to welcome Dr. Gelb
back to the Hill. Dr. Gelb, I didn't realize when you left us in the
spring of 1967 that Daniel Ellsberg would make you famous. We are
glad to have you back here today.
And, Professor Thomson, we are happy to welcome you back to
Washington. I should say we are happy to welcome Senator Muskie
back to Washington, also.
I would like to review the President's proposals made last night,
the three options he said were available to him : first, withdrawal ; sec-
ond, negotiations, and third, military action.
TIME TO HAVE ENDED U.S. INVOLVEMENT
I was told last year by a high level spokesman for the Administration
that I or anj^one who voted for the McGovern-Hatfield end-the-war
amendment or the Mansfield amendment to end the war would rue the
day that we had cast our votes for them. I cast my votes for them
feeling we should have ended our involvement the end of last year, that
we had the possibility of doing it at that time, and that if Vietnami-
zation was going to work — if they were going to hack it on their own —
that was the time to do it.
How would you view that in perspective now. 12 months later or so,
whether or not that would have been the time to have really made a
determined effort to get out, Dr. Gelb ?
Mr. Gelb. Well. I think the right time to have gotten out was or
were the many occasions prior, 2 years ago, but that is hindsight, not
foresight at all.
Most Americans agreed with the aims and goals of this war until
quite late in the war, supported the Presidents.
By March, 1968. I think most had come to the clear realization that
there was something wrong somewhere and I think at that point in
time the decision should have been made to totally disengage U.S.
forces. If we were right in 1968, it was right 2 years ago and it is right
today. The argument that we can't get out now because the South
Vietnamese are finally being tested seems to me the final absurdity
of the positions the Administrations have offered over the years.
It is precisely in order to let them test themselves that we said we were
in there for all these years.
DESIRABILITY OF END-THE-WAR AMENDMENT THIS YEAR
Senator Percy. As I understand your testimony, you feel that an
end-the-war amendment sometime this year would be desirable, aimed
39
at, say, a terminal point the end of this year. The present withdrawal
rate, which is not dramatic — the President's present withdrawal rate
is 10,000 a month, about half what it has been, but still 10,000 a month
— would get us out by November 30 ; so the December 31 date is not
really drastic. Is that correct?
Mr. Thomson. The chairman asked us earlier what could be done,
and we both very strongly affirmed our support for such an end-the-
war amendment. This is one place where action can take place, and
it is more imperative than it ever was. It was imperative 2 years ago,
10 years ago, and it might as well happen now.
ACTIVITIES AND LOCATION OF REMAINING U.S. FORCES
Senator Percy. "What are the men essentially doing now, the 60,000
or so that we have left? Six thousand we know are security forces,
fighting forces providing backup security for the other 51,000, roughly.
Are the others essentially advising the South Vietnamese forces or are
they engaged in the decisions as to which equipment will be shipped
back to the U.S. and which will be left for the South Vietnamese?
What are those forces doing right now and where are they located?
Mr. Gelb. Well, they are located throughout the country and they
are performing a variety of functions. They are still giving military
advice to units engaged in combat. Some are providing security for our
own forces. Others are engaged in the universal process of staff opera-
tions, and yet others, and I think the bulk, are involved in logistical
operations. I was told by many of our military officers coming back
over the years that it was always necessary for the United States mili-
tary to be involved in logistical operations, in driving trucks, because
if we didn't drive trucks from the docks to the battlefield and the South
Vietnamese did, the supplies would never get there.
SAFETY OF U.S. FORCES
Senator Percy. I would like both of you to comment about the safety
of American forces. None of us question the duty and responsibility
of the President to provide for their safety. Taking into account the
present North Vietnamese offensive waged on three fronts, can you
give us your insight as to the level of safety those men have and what,
if you were advising the President, you would advise with respect to
the safety of those forces, and what he should do in connection with
proposals for withdrawal, say, by the end of this year ?
Mr. Gelb. Well, I am not nearly familiar enough with the actual
tactical battlefield situations to have any judgment on that. My only
judgment would be that they would be safer if they were not there.
Mr. Thomson. I would certainly support the last sentence. It strikes
me that the determination to remove them fast, a determination that
can be credibly communicated to the other side, is a communication
that would be welcomed by the other side. They have no interest in
inflicting that kind of "humiliation" on us. They know precisely what
a commander-in-chief owes to his forces, and the wisest action we
could take with regard to those troops would be to remove them at
once, informing the other side of our intent to do so.
40
LOGISTICS OF STEPPING TJP WITHDRAWAL
Senator Percy. Now, from the standpoint of withdrawing them if
we decided to step up the rate to 20,000 or 30,000 a month, that would
present no logistical problem from the standpoint of withdrawing
them by air or sea. We have plenty of naval vessels there Would there
be any problem in withdrawing those forces if we make the decision to
step up the withdrawal ? .
Mr. Gelb. Senator, there was a study done m the Pentagon just be-
fore I left, when we had, as you know, over 500,000 men in Vietnam,
with all their equipment, that all of these forces with their equipment
could be pulled out in about 6 to 9 months. So if necessary we can per-
form that kind of feat.
Senator Percy. How many forces were you talking about ?
Mr. Gelb. Over 500,000.
Senator Percy. So 6 to 9 months was the time span for that. There-
fore, we could withdraw our existing forces, and do so on a basis that
wouldn't look like a route. We do have to take into account the demor-
alizing effect this might have on the South Vietnamese, but certainly
they have been on notice, since for three and a half years we have been
withdrawing. Two or 3 years ago, in conversations with the South Viet-
namese ambassador. I asked, "Is there any question in your mind that
the policy decision has been made by this country to get out and you
are going to be on your own?" And I was told there was no doubt in his
mind they were going to have to be on their own. So they have had a
long advance notice.
If we decided to get those forces out in a reasonably short span of
time — taking into account logistics, what they are doing and the duties
they might be performing — you think they could be withdrawn in how
short a span of time, or what would be the longest span of time that we
could reasonably expect the Pentagon to get them out?
Mr. Gelb. I am no logistical expert and the figure I gave you before
was one I merely repeated, but if that is anywhere near true, they could
have taken out over 500,000 men in 6 to 9 months, then certainly
one could withdraw 60,000 men within 4 months, but I repeat, that is
the judgment of others.
POSSIBILITY OF BLOODBATH
Senator Percy. The President mentioned last night that, after an
agreement, all our men could be out, lock, stock and barrel, in 120 days.
From the standpoint of the withdrawal option available to the Presi-
dent, the President and the National Security Council obviously have
given very careful consideration to the 17 million South Vietnamese.
No one wants a bloodbath, and I suppose it is a question as to how you
get the bloodbath, whether it comes on the ground or whether f rom'the
air. Certainly it is just as bloody when there is very intensive bombing
and fighting m a country. But from historical perspective, from every-
thing you have seen in the study and preparation of the papers now
known as the Pentagon Papers, what is the prospect if we do withdraw
in 120 days? What would literally happen in that country militarily
and politically from the standpoint of the effect on those 17 million
people i Vv ould you envision a bloodbath ?
41
Mr. Gelb. Senator. I think we have a clear obligation to provide
refuge for all South Vietnamese who want to leave the country and I
think we have a clear obligation to make that a serious policy whore
we pursue the line of action that I am suggesting.
I have no idea, really, how many people would want to seek refuge
under that sort of arrangement. I have no doubt in my mind that there
would be bloodletting. This is, as I have tirelessly repeated, a civil
war a7id there is no escaping some of that.
But two things seem paramount in my own mind : First, that we
are not the keeper of Vietnamese morality and, second, the gross
judgment that the probability is very high that we will kill more
people, more Vietnamese, by continuing this war, especially with the
expanded bombing operations of the last few months, than will die
in any subsequent bloodbath.
Mr. Thomson. Senator, I have heard the fear of the bloodbath in-
voked now for 7 or 8 years since I served on the National Security
Council staff, and during those 7 or 8 years we have killed infinitely
more people on both sides, infinitely more than any accommodation
or ending of the civil war would involve. It strikes me the bloodbath
danger has to be put in the context of the daily bloodbath we have
inflicted on three countries.
Senator Percy. There is probably not any doubt that the objective
of their vengeance wonld be those who have closely identified and asso-
ciated themselves with the Saigon Government. Thev have already
murdered 17.000, 18,000, 20,000 village chiefs and local officials. They
have tried systematically to intimidate them, to try to get them not to
hold office, and it is literally murder, murder in war.
LIKELIHOOD OF BLOODBATH OF INNOCENTS
From your own knowledge of their mentality, how they operate,
how severe would you anticipate their reactions would be against
the innocent, those who are not really associated with the effort but
who are the peasants, the women, the children, whomever it mav be?
What would be the likelihood of a bloodbath of innocents? We get
visions of 17 million people being slaughtered; that is one extreme.
The other extreme would be that they would walk in and say, "All is
forgotten; nothing is going to happen, no trials, nothing; just go on
as you were." That is an extreme also not likely to occur. What would
most likely happen ?
Mr. Thomson. I might point out in answer, Senator Percy, that
during the 20-odd years of this civil conflict, before it became so
heavily escalated and before Vietnamese politics were frozen in the
south by a heavy military government and a heavy American pres-
ence, accommodation was the norm, accommodation was the norm
among political elements, and among apolitical elements — and the
heavy proportion of the peasantry, the population of the country, is
fairly apolitical. What they have sought is refuge from dropping
bombs or shot bullets, and such people will accommodate to whatever
the new reality may be.
Those at the very top who have identified themselves totally as
officeholders and the like will certainly seek safe haven, refuge, as Mr.
42
Gelb rightly asserts we should provide them. Many in between will
make the kind of accommodations that have so often been seen within
Southeast Asian society over these years. >
Mr. Gelb. Senator Percy, could I just add a postscript to that i
The people who live in the area we call Indochina are marvelous at
making accommodations.
We all know that Souvanna Phouma, the Prime Minister of the gov-
ernment that we support, has had a tacit arrangement for years with
the North Vietnamese Government not to go after and harass North
Vietnamese forces on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, forces that were coming
down the trail to kill American soldiers. If they can make that kind of
convenient agreement, I think their possibilities are limitless.
EFFECTIVENESS OF SOUTH VIETNAMESE AIR FORCE
Senator Percy. The impression is left that even when we get out that
we will have to continue the bombing for an interminable period of
time and that to not continue that bombing would leave the South
Vietnamese army exposed and without support. Yet, as I questioned
Secretary Laird as to the extent and size and power and resources of
the South Vietnamese air force — it is hardly limited to Piper Cubs
and leaflets— his testimony revealed that the South Vietnamese Air
Force is one of the most formidable in the world today, that it has a
thousand fighters and bombers, 500 big personnel carrier helicopters,
and 40,000 trained airmen. And the North Vietnamese have never flown
except in maybe one instance over South Vietnam ; so the South Viet-
namese have absolute air supremacy in the south.
If we did withdraw on an orderly basis over a period of 120, 150, 180
days from now, and we decided to stop bombing, what is your own
feeling as to the effectiveness and the backup and support that would
be provided by the South Vietnamese air force itself? Would we be
leaving them helpless ?
Mr. Gelb. If we would be leaving them helpless, there is nothing
we can do to be helpful to them.
To my knowledge, the statistics which you have cited are correct.
The South Vietnamese Air Force, like the South Vietnamese Army,
is one of the largest in the world; in proportion to population it is the
largest. If this kind of armed force in numbers and in quality of equip-
ment can't hack it, one wonders whether they ever will. Something
has always gone wrong with them, though, and I think it has less
to do with their numbers and quality of equipment we provide them
and more to do with their political situation and the quality of
their leadership in the field — things that we can't solve.
Mr. Thomson. Senator Percy, I asked a former high State Depart-
ment official a month ago as this offensive began, a man recently re-
tired, what he would do at that juncture; and he said that if he
were the President, he would commandeer every piece of flying equip-
ment and every boat he possibly could and fly over to Vietnam mem-
bers of the media, Members of the Congress, members of civic groups
and the like and take them all over the country and show them what
we have provided over the past 10, 15 years in the way of equipment,
money, treasure, and the like, to these people so that they would know
finally that we had done everything we could and that if in fact
the South Vietnamese collapsed, it was not our doing.
43
EFFECT OF BOMBING OX NORTH VIETNAMESE AND ALLIES
Senator Percy. I have one more question on the withdrawal option
of the President's speech last night, and I should really ask it of a
psychologist rather than scholars in your field. I have long felt as an
amateur with some little knowledge of human nature, but not a
scholarly knowledge, that the bombing in the north — while destroying
some supplies, some fuel depots, and so forth — what good it did
for our side was more than compensated by the North Vietnamese
reaction to resist their enemy from the sky, and that it did more
to solidify the north and cause them to wage this war with an inten-
sity and hatred they might not otherwise have had, and also gave cause
for their allies in Eastern Europe and China to support them with
everything they were asked to provide.
WITHDRAWAL AND SOUTH VIETNAMESE LOYALTY AND WILL TO RESIST
From the standpoint of the morale and fighting spirit of the peo-
ple in the South, to which we have tried to contribute for over a dec-
ade, if they now have that will, is this as good a time as any to decide
whether anything we could do in the next 3 or 4 or 5 years would
make the people more loyal to the Saigon Government, to give them
the will to resist and fight, or to weigh the alternatives and maybe
simply decide that they can't make it on their own ? Will we, pulling
out, make the big difference ?
Mr. Gelb. Well, you know there are some Vietnam experts and
many people know much more about Vietnam itself than I do, but
there are some Vietnam experts who have argued over the years that
the only way to get those forces in South Vietnam who do oppose the
takeover from the north, to assert themselves to coalesce, to gain a
common loyalty, that the only way to do this is to withdraw the
American presence. Our staying there certainly never has done this.
SENATOR AIKEN 'fi COMMENT COMMENDED
Senator Percy. In concluding questioning on this option, I would
say I supported the comment of Senator Aiken on withdrawal. I
thought it was endowed with great wisdom, and I hope he reiterates
it and sticks to it now as he did a few years ago. If it was true then, it
may be true now, and I would hope that our policy would be based
very strongly on a steady course of total withdrawal at the earliest
and most rapid possible rate.
From the standpoint of the negotiations option, I would like to ask
just a few questions, and then yield to my colleagues and come back
later.
POSSIBILITY OF ENDING WAR BY NEGOTIATIONS
But to get started on that end of the second option the President
actually worked with, our negotiations with the North Vietnamese
actually began as far back as June 1964 with the Seaborn missions to
Hanoi.
The Pentagon papers and subsequent events showed that during
this entire 8-year period both sides realty sought military victory and
put little faith in negotiations.
83-605—73 4
44
Did negotiations ever have a real possibility of ending the war and,
if so, when in your judgment?
Mr Gelb I make a distinction, Senator Percy, between a political
settlement and a military settlement. In my judgment a political set-
tlement between Diem. Kahn, Ky, Thieu, groups that have controlled
South Vietnam under U.S. auspices, political accommodation between
them and the North Vietnamese has never been feasible, that it we
were to step aside and allow other groups to find their own level,
political level, that possibly there were grounds for such an agree-
ment, But in the absence of that, we could do the only thing at our
disposal and the only thing in our interest, namely, to step aside from
the conflict itself, withdraw our forces from direct involvement, and
let the political and military processes of the civil war work their
way out.
EFFECT OF U.S. BOMBING ON NEGOTIATIONS
Senator Percy. Was the U.S. bombing of North Vietnam an impedi-
ment to negotiations or did it in effect drive them to the bargaining
table, and was it the bargaining chip that we were to use to get them
finallv and eventually to the bargaining table ?
Mr. Gelb. I doubt that very much. It is true, as you know, that
many of our leaders over the years said that they thought of the
bombing as a bargaining chip for negotiations ; but the bombing really
became the stumbling block to getting negotiations started because all
those negotiations which you cite from the Seaborn mission in 1964,
until the beginning of what are called substantive negotiations in
October, 1968, were about whether or not and under what conditions
to stop the bombing, not about how to settle the war.
Mr. Thomson. Furthermore, the bombing itself, Senator Percy,
had multiple and changing rationales, and one of the current ration-
ales is to stiffen the spine of the south — which has very little to do
with either breaking the will of the north or bringing them to the
bargaining table.
OPPORTUNITY FOR ADMINISTRATION TO RESPOND TO QUESTIONS
Senator Percy. Mr. Chairman, will members of the Administration
be given an opportunity to respond to some of these same questions
in this set of hearings, because I am asking the same questions I would
be asking them, no different at all. And they are not loaded questions;
they are the kind of questions I think we need objective answers to
and we need it on both sides of the question.
The Chairman. Senator, they are always welcome. The Secretary
of State has been invited, I guess, innumerable times. He has been
a very busy man and has not seen fit to come, but he has a standing
invitation to come at any time.
If you wish. I will issue a special invitation to him to come. Our
trouble is not his finding a forum, it is getting him to come before
this committee. As you know. Mr. Kissinger has declined to come.
Senator Percy. The President having called the Secretary back on
an emergency basis would be justification for saying that lie himself
personally could not appear, but if the Administration would like to
have someone here during the course of the next few days or next
45
week, a person of their own selection who could be a spokesman for
the Administration, would that opportunity be offered to them?
The Chairman. Of course it would. We have invited Mr. Kissinger
innumerable times. Pie refused to come on the grounds of, I guess, ex-
ecutive privilege. He refuses to come. We also, I may say, invited people
who were formerly involved in this. We invited Mr. William Bundy.
He declined to come. I stated all this at the beginning of the hearing.
It is in the record. We have invited those who were participants in
the study. The hearing was not, as the Senator knows, set to discuss
last night's statement. This hearing has been set for 2 months. It was
purely coincidental that it took place this morning after the President's
speech. I didn't know the President was going to make the speech until
4 o'clock yesterday afternoon.
EFFECT OF PRESENT U.S. MILITARY ACTIONS ON PARTIES INVOLVED
Senator Percy. Thank you. If the bombing did not drive them to the
table, and did not encourage negotiations, then I would like to ask
about the mining of Haiphong and the intensive bombing of rail lines
and so forth.
From the standpoint of the parties involved, is this action now being
undertaken by the U.S. military likely to drive them to more realistic
negotiations and more favorable consideration of the President's pro-
posals, or less consideration, and will it cause Peking and Moscow to
put more or less pressure on them to seek a negotiated settlement ? Dr.
Thomson ?
Mr. Thomson. We tried to cover that subject to some degree earlier.
Our own view, at least mine, is that this new escalation up north will,
in fact, stiffen their spine, give them a new will to live, a new will to
resist, a new will to achieve ultimate success. It strikes me that they
have always known from the beginning of time that they live there and
we don't, and that eventually we will go home ; and even back in early
1965 when people were discussing the possibility of a bombing track,
it was suggested by wiser men who knew Vietnam that even if bombed
back into the stone age, the North Vietnamese would with reluctance
permit the destruction of what they had built over the last 10 years,
retreat back into the bush, and reappear once we had gone home — as
we would eventually.
As for pressures from Peking and Moscow, it strikes me that, as Mr.
Gelb put it earlier, we are trying to do to the Eussians what Mr. Nixon
tells us we face, namely, humiliate them through a kind of an ulti-
matum into putting pressure on Hanoi. It is very hard to judge whether
Moscow or Peking have ever been able to control Hanoi; they have
been able to give advice, to give aid ; but ultimately small, determined
allies are very independent people. It would seem to me that one con-
sequence of last night's speech may well be the forcing together ever
so slightly of Peking and Moscow in further support of Hanoi.
LIKELIHOOD OF HANOI'S BEING RESPONSIVE TO PRESIDENT'S PROPOSALS
Senator Percy. Senator Aiken has read into the record the proposals
made by the President last night which I would look upon as generous,
but coupled with the decisions in the military area, is there any real
46
likelihood, knowing what we know about Hanoi, thaUhey are going to
be responsive to that peace offer as a basis for negotiations so long as
this escalated military action accompanies it? # .
Mr Gelb. Senator, if I were an analyst in Hanoi, and were assigned
to do a staff paper on whether or not my government ought to accept
President Nixon's proposals, I think I could write a very persuasive
paper that they ought to. Basically, though, my argument would come
to rest on cheating. Let's sign on the dotted line, get the Americans out
of there and then violate the agreement. That is sort of the alternative
the President is giving them.
If you plan on that kind of deal, then the proposal is sensible. .But 1
think it comes down to viewing this through their own special eyes as
best we can because they are the other contestant in this war and they
have a long history of being left in the lurch by agreements with major
powers, and they are undoubtedly gun shy. The thought of their lead-
ers, the same leaders who were there 15 and 20 years ago, accepting this
kind of a proposal seems less than credible to me.
EFFECT OF MILITARY ESCALATION ON" GETTING BACK POW's
Senator Percy. The President has put high emphasis on the prison-
ers of war. He mentioned in his speech last night that, of his condi-
tions, first of all American prisoners of war must be returned, and then
he coupled it with once prisoners of war are released, once the inter-
nationally supervised cease-fire has begun, we will cease all acts of
force throughout Indochina and withdraw American forces within 4
months. He is deeply concerned about the prisoners of war and those
missing in action. We all are.
What is your feeling as to the effect of the military escalation on the
chances of getting back our men held prisoner ?
Mr. Thomson. I would suggest it has been hurt. It strikes me that
there are two points to be made about the prisoners of war : The first is
that they are the one major chip, the one piece of leverage which Hanoi
has vis-a-vis Washington, and Hanoi is not going to give it up until it
is sure we are going to take certain fundamental moves to get out to-
tally. They are not going to trust us until wre make those moves and
they are not going to give up the chip until we make those moves. It is
the norm in all wars that I know of, to exchange prisoners of war after
the settlement, not as a precondition to the settlement.
WHAT COULD WE HAVE EXPECTED PROM NEGOTIATIONS?
Senator Percy. I must say that I still hope there can be some negoti-
ated settlement, because it is the only way to end all of the war. When
the President announced his new proposals in October 1970, I intro-
duced a resolution supporting them and it was unanimouslv accepted,
so the Senate for the first time really backed the President. Those were
real is! ic, flexible terms which were the basis for negotiations, not in any
way a take-it-or-leave-it offer. The President made that very clear.
Shortly thereafter I visited the chiefs of state of nine countries— at
Dr. Kissinger's suggestion — nations which might have some leverage
with Peking, Hanoi or Moscow, to ask them to help get across that these
negotiating terms were flexible, reasonable and realistic.
47
What could we realistically have expected from negotiations?
Mr. Gelb. Well, my own way of looking at it is that we can't expect
too much in terms of an overall settlement. That would involve our
taking a direct hand in overthrowing the present government of Saigon
and I wouldn't like to see our country do that and I think it is unneces-
sary to do that.
f think the very act of American withdrawal would unseat these
people because they have no support that goes much beyond our
presence.
Mr. Thomson. So the end product of negotiation later on would be
a form of coalition government in the south, my guess would be.
Mr. Gelb. It would be part of the natural process.
Mr. Thomson. It would be accomplished through osmosis and proc-
ess rather than imposition by the U.S.
Senator Percy. But you do feel if it had been possible to present at
some time frame in the past some sort of coalition government — and
we would have been willing to have seen that happen — that we could
have had some degree of success in negotiations and an end to the war?
Mr. Gelb. Then we would have had some responsibility for that coa-
lition government because we would have been part of its creation, and
I think that this is their business, not our business. I would like to see
them form their own coalitions through their own processes.
Senator Percy. Mr. Chairman. I have a few more questions on option
No. 2 and then I would like to get into option No. 3, which is the one
the President selected. But I would like to yield back to you.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, because we do have a caucus
after a bit and I will then turn it over to you.
PROVISIONAL MILITARY DEMARCATION LINE
Because this keeps recurring, I want to read one paragraph from the
Geneva Accords into the record because members seem to forget it.
This is the final declaration of the Geneva Convention, July 21, 1954,
and section 6 reads :
The Conference recognizes that the essential purpose of the agreement relat-
ing to Vietnam is to settle military questions with a view to ending hostilities
and that the military demarcation line is provisional and should not in any way
be interpreted as constituting a political or territorial boundary. The Conference
expresses its conviction that the execution of the provisions set out in the pres-
ent declaration and in the agreement on the cessation of hostilities creates the
necessary basis for the achievement in the near future of a political settlement in
Vietnam.
Then, of course, there are the provisions in the agreement of the
Cessation of Hostilities in Vietnam on July 20, 1954. which was pri-
marily the military settlement of the war between the French and
Vietnamese. I quote part of article 1. This is merely to identify it for
purposes of people who wish to pursue it :
The provisional military demarcation line is fixed as shown on the map at-
tached. So it refers to that. There was no question about the intention of all
the people in Geneva except the United States that it wasn't two countries.
WHAT IS AND HAS ALWAYS BEEN WRONG
I refer again, at the risk of seeming to belabor a matter because I
think it is fundamental. Dr. Gelb, to your thesis, which I think needs
48
emphasis. You very forcefully repeat it in your statement : "Something
is wrong somewhere. Something always has been wrong." You have
touched on this, but I think it is well since we are reviewing the past
which was really the purpose of this hearing. It is the intrusion of the
President's speech that has occasioned its discussion, not that I object
to it but it is a coincidence. Could you elaborate a bit on what it is
that was wrong. You emphasize it so clearly there, and in the next
paragraph you say. "Without this legitimacy, and the quest for it
seems never-ending, the Saigon regime perpetually will require Ameri-
can support."
I think for the enlightenment of the committee, you ought to elab-
orate on it because you had something more in mind than those words
today.
Mr. Gelb. Yes, sir. Vietnam always hasn't been one country. It has
been divided by conquerers in the past. It was divided into adminis-
trative regions by the French. At the beginning of World War II, as
is well known, a' group calling themselves the Viet Minh came into
being to drive out the French and the Japanese, and to create a na-
tional state, a single national state. All evidence points to the fact
that most Vietnamese supported the Viet Minh. There were not that
many collaborators. It was a strong national movement, a movement
that] in the judgment of every scholar I know, every historian I know,
of Vietnam, would have in the natural course of events come to power
in all of Vietnam. This doesn't mean they were without opposition.
No political group in any country is without opposition. That isn't
the issue. The point is it was a movement to establish their own coun-
try free from foreign domination.
If you look at the Pentagon papers you will see that in 1947 and
1948 our own intelligence community and our specialists in the State
Department recognized this, and they couldn't find any direct links or
strings being pulled on Ho Chi Minh from Moscow. They questioned
in a memo to the Secretary of State at that time, Dean Acheson,
whether there was any intimate connection at all beyond the fact that
Ho Chi Minh in addition to being a national was also a Communist.
The Chairman. Acheson concluded he was, though; didn't he?
Mr. Gelb. Well, it is not clear that he concluded he was, but I think
he concluded for reasons having little to do with Vietnam itself, that
the U.S. ought to help the French, whether Ho Chi Minh was con-
trolled from Moscow or not, and I think we know, moving a jump
further in history, that the President of the United States Dwight D.
Eisenhower believed that Ho Chi Minh had the support of the over-
whelming majority of the Vietnamese people, some 80 percent, not all,
but what President of the United States could command 80 percent?
It has been a long time.
There have been groups in opposition to Viet Minh, groups of vari-
ous character, some depending very directly on the United States, some
of really indigenous quality. These groups have never been able to get
themselves together. It seems that their common conflicts are greater
than their common interests, and so in the natural course of events,
with the repressive and I think obviously repressive regime of Diem,
the Viet Minh forces began to gain power again and once Vietnam was
in danger of being lost to these forces, the U.S. began to step in very
49
heavily; but all through this process you see contending forces within
a nation seeking independence and seeking to settle their question of
who shall be the government of their own country, and you see at
the same time outside powers coming in to tip the scales one way or
another, succeeding because they were large powers, in perpetuating
the war but never ending it. I think that is what was behind my state-
ment, sir.
COOPERATION IN RESCUING U.S. PILOTS AND FIGHTING JAPANESE
The Chairman. You have refreshed my memory on one other point,
on which perhaps you are informed. Was it correct that about 1944 or
1945 American officers, specifically, I believe, a Colonel Gallagher,
cooperated with Ho Chi Minh in the rescue of American pilots and
fighting the Japanese in North Vietnam ? Do you remember something
about that?
Mr. Gelb. Yes, there was cooperation when the U.S. OSS (Office of
Strategic Services) teams and Viet Minh — the extent of that is not
clear.
The Chairman. It seems to me I recall in one of Bernard Fall's
books that our own OSS recommended Ho Chi Minh very highly to
our own people as the most effective man to combat the Japanese dur-
ing that period in the latter days of the war, when Ho Chi Minh was
released from prison. I believe, in China. He came down there. I am not
exactly clear on the time, but we will go into this later.
BACKGROUND OF MEMBERS OF PRESENT SOUTH VIETNAMESE
GOVERNMENT
Arising out of one of Senator Percy's questions, I meant to ask also
about the present government of South Vietnam. Was General Ky a
member of the French Air Force during the war between 1946 and
1954 % Do you remember? Do either one of "you know ?
Mr. Gelb. I just can't remember. I think so.
Mr. Thomson. I can't remember.
The Chairman. Where did General Ky learn to fly an airplane? Did
we train him or did the French ?
Mr. Gelb. I believe the French, but I am not certain.
The Chairman. Do you know whether General Thieu was a north-
erner or a southerner ?
Mr. Gelb. I believe he was
The Chairman. By birth?
Mr. Gelb. I believe both Ky and Thieu were northerners.
The Chairman. Were they not both members of the French Air
Force or the French Army ? Armed Forces ? You don't know ?
Mr. Gelb. To the best of my recollection ; yes.
WAS FORMER PRESIDENT DIEM A COLONIAL GOVERNOR?
The Chairman. Was former President Diem a colonial governor
before the war ? Do you know that ?
Mr. Gelb. I believe he was, sir.
50
HO CHI MINH'S PLEADING CAUSE OF INDEPENDENT VIETNAM
The Chairman. You mentioned Mr. Ho Chi Minh beginning this
process in World War II. I seem to have read that as early as the Ver-
sailles conference he appeared and pleaded the cause of an independent
Vietnam. Do you know anything about that ?
Mr. Gelb. What you say is correct, sir.
The Chairman. It is correct ?
Mr. Gelb. He sought to get an audience, I believe; it was denied
him.
The Chairman. He was that early, pleading the cause of an inde-
pendent Vietnam ; is that right ?
Mr. Gelb. Yes, sir.
Mr. Thomson. That is correct.
FEUDAL TYPE OF UNITY IN VIETNAM
The Chairman. You mentioned the government from time to time
had been divided. I mean, there were the three principal provinces of
Vietnam. Did it or did it not have at least a feudal type of unity under
an emperor ? Was there an emperor who was generally referred to as
the emperor of Vietnam ?
Mr. Gelb. Bao Dai was considered the emperor of Vietnam.
The Chairman. Hereditary emperor ; is that correct ?
Mr. Gelb. I believe so.
Mr. Thomson. Technically, he was Emperor of Annam.
The Chairman. What?
Mr. Thomson. Emperor of Annam, Bao Dai. But going back in his-
tory there was a unified empire, a Vietnamese empire, built on the
Chinese Confucian model.
ASSUMPTION THIS IS NOT A CIVIL WAR
The Chairman. That was my impression. There were three large
provinces, but they considered themselves part of Vietnam. The only
reason I mentioned it is with reference to this fundamental assump-
tion which recurs in this and previous Administration's statements
that this is not a civil war. It relates to your very strong statement that
this is a civil war. that it isn't a war between two independent nation
states and never has been. Is that not your position ?
Mr. Gelb. Yes, it is, sir.
Mr. Thomson. That has been one of our greatest stumbling blocks
because men in government have in fact believed, have themselves con-
sidered that it was not a civil war when all along it has been very clear
to all participants and to all scholars that it is a civil war.
VIETNAMESE UNITY WHILE FIGHTING FRENCH
The Chairman. Originally it was a colonial war. It was the Viet
Minh fighting the French : wasn't it?
Mr. Thomson. That is correct.
The Chairman. And at that time, except for the French forces,
there was great unity, even though, as Dr. Gelb has said, they were
not unanimous. But I believe in Eisenhower's book, "Mandate for
51
Change," he says if the election had been held during the fighting,
Ho Chi Minh would have received 80 percent of the votes. This does
relate, I think, to the way you look at it, but our Government has
misrepresented this in its rhetoric all along for many years, but it is
rather essential.
UNIQUENESS OF U.S. SUPPORT OF COLONIAL POWER
Do you recall any other case in the history of the United States
where it took the side of the colonial power to assist it to retain con-
trol of a colony ?
Mr. Thomson. It doesn't come to mind, but I might just point out
that there was an anomaly, Senator Fulbright, that grew sadly out
of the death of President Roosevelt, because otherwise in Southeast
Asia we elected to urge our allies, our wartime allies, to divest them-
selves of their colonial holdings. The plan of President Roosevelt
had been at one stage of the war to put Indochina under international
trusteeship. He felt very strongly that the French should not come
back and he was supported by the Far East Division in the State
Department.
With the President's death, however, in April 1945, power shifted
within the Department of State — this is being brought out by docu-
ments now being published — power shifted to the European Bureau,
and those who felt that our relations with France must be para-
mount prevailed in the advice that was given to President Truman.
And it was as a result of this bureaucratic power shift, basically, that
we did support the French return and then, in due course, financed
the French war.
The Chairman. You know of no similar instance in which this
country has supported a colonial power in such fashion, do you ?
Mr. Thomson. It doesn't come to mind.
The Chairman. It doesn't come to my mind, either. It ought to come
to your mind if it occurred since you are an historian.
Mr. Thomson. I am searching my mind, sir.
The Chairman. We haven't had that long a history ; I can't think
of any case.
Mr. Thomson. We did support the Government of Pakistan against
a government in Bangladesh, but it is a fairly recent phenomenon.
The Chairman. I am not sure you are correct in saving that is a
colonial holding. They were created once at the same time as part of
India. I don't think it was ever commonly regarded as a colony.
Mr. Thomson. Only by the Bengalis.
The Ciiah.man. Only by the Bengalis is correct. But Vietnam was
not considered a colony only by the Vietnamese. It had been acknowl-
edged as a colony by everybody for 75 or 80 years or so; hadn't it?
Mr. Thomson. I think that is correct.
The Chairman. I don't think that is an analagous situation. Be-
sides that, what did we do for the Pakistanis, if you wish to make a
case for it, other than to tilt the rhetoric a little? We had already given
them the arms before that. We did nothing very specific at that par-
ticular time.
Mr. Thomson. That is correct.
The Chairman. Whereas, we did a great deal in this case.
52
ACCEPTANCE OF POLITICAL MISJTJDGMENT OR ERROR
This is a unique instance and it is another reason why I think your
theory that the acceptance of a political misjudgment or error is the
right way. if you are ever going to cleanse their minds of the afflic-
tions that have grown up through these wars. I see nothing wrong or
immoral about that. This is wnat I started out asking. I don't under-
stand why a country, just as an individual, can't accept the idea that
they could be wrong in a political judgment. There is nothing im-
moral about that. It goes back to the same period in which we took
also a peculiar attitude toward the indigenous forces in China; did
we not. Mr. Gelb? I mean, this is about the same time we were making
up our minds in a slightly different case. China was not quite a colony
although it had been chewed up and treated like a colony by many
of the European countries. Each got parts of it. But we were unduly
influenced by an obsession with ideological matters during that period;
were we not ?
Mr. Thomson. Our intervention in the Chinese civil war was suffi-
ciently halfhearted to win us the enmity of both sides eventually.
The Chairman. Yes, and was equally unsucessful, I mean.
Mr. Thomson. It was highly unsuccessful. Fortunately, we did not
press it as far as we have been encouraged to press it in Vietnam. And
to some degree I am afraid it was the memory of China's loss and the
consequences thereof in this country that forced one president after
another to hang on in Vietnam.
The Chairman. Yes.
WAS PRESIDENT'S STATEMENT ADMISSION OF FAILURE OF VTETNAMIZATION ?
Let's see. I was left a question by Mr. Muskie.
Mr. Muskie says he has to go to the floor. He asks, do you feel that
last night's statement by the President was, among other things, an
admission that Vietnamization was a failure?
Mr. Thomson. Yes.
The Chairman. Do you agree with that ?
Mr. Gelb. I would say at least it was an admission that he didn't
want to take the chance and see.
WHAT HAVE NORTH VIETNAMESE OR RUSSIANS DONE?
The Chairman. This is another question he left here. What is it
that the North Vietnamese have done to the United States or that
the Russians have done or that either have done, that would justify
the actions that we are taking?
Mr. Thomson. It strikes me, sir, that the North Vietnamese have
proved a determination to survive and prevail and that, in itself, has
caused the American Presidents to feel impending humiliation at his
doorstep ; that is all they have done. And another kind of leader from
a different vantage point could have construed that reality in differ-
ent terms.
The Chairman. Do you have any comment on that, Mr. Gelb?
Mi-. Gelb. I agree with it, sir.
53
RATIONALE FOR 19G5 BOMBING
The Chairman. Mr. Gelb, I believe you were there at the time. Could
you tell us what the rationale was for the bombing that began in
February of 1965?
Mr. Gelb. I was not in the executive branch of Government at that
time.
The Chairman. Were you. Mr. Thomson I
Mr. Thomson. I was in the executive branch at the time, sir, and the
rationale, as I remember, was multiple, as I have suggested. It was
originally to break their will, but with the bombing of the Pleiku
barracks in the first week of February, an additional incentive was,
as I have suggested, to stiffen Saigon's spine. So it began with dual
aims: to break the will of the north and to stitfen the spine of the
south, but eventually there was added to it the hope of inducing the
north into some kind of a conference situation — though by the way
the negotiators options were phrased at the time, in retrospect, it seems
that that conference would have been one in which to receive their
surrender.
Mr. Gelb. It was also a means of restricting the flow of supplies
of men from north to south.
Mr. Thomson. Correct. The further rationale was to try to cut the
infiltration routes.
RATIONALE FOR 19 64 STRIKE ON CITY OF VINH
The Chairman. What was the rationale for the strike on, I believe,
the citv of Vinh on August 4. 1961? Do either one of you know? That,
I believe, was the first overt, substantial strike. Are either one of you
familiar with that incident?
Mr. Thomson. I don't have clear recollection of that.
Mr. Gelb. Are you talking about the Tonkin Gulf incident?
The Chairman. There was an alleged second incident on August 7.
What I am asking you is, insofar as you deduct or have found out
from the papers or your personal experience, what was the real rea-
son for that strike, not the alleged reason ?
Mr. Gelb. Well, if we look at the papers, and I can't say this from
my own firsthand experience, but if we look at the papers, I think our
leaders were trying to send Hanoi a message.
Mr. Thomson. The phrasing was "to show them we mean business,"
whatever that means.
The Chairman. Is that what the papers indicate ?
Mr. Gelb. Yes. sir.
The Chairman. It was to send them a message. We hear that phrase
in current political statements around the country, trying to send
Washington a message. Some of them are succeeding pretty well up
to a point, but the message has not gotten through yet.
Mr. Thomson. One finds, Mr. Chairman
The Chairman. I wondered if you had studied it. You know what I
am talking about. Mr. Thomson : don't you ?
Mr. Thomson. I am not entirely on the track.
54
The Chairman. There have been three or four books written about
this incident. The latest one I have seen is Mr. Austin's, of the New
York Times. It proves pretty conclusively— I suppose that depends
upon a lot of other things, one's own experience and background— that
the alleged incident didn't occur.
Mr. Thomson-. I can speak bluntly to that point.
The Chairman. That is what I am asking you about,
Mr. Thomson. I was in the White House. The NSC staff at the time
and some of my colleagues indicated very clearly that there was no
credible evidence that the second incident had, in fact, ever taken
place. It was judged, however, to be useful nonetheless, to show, as the
papers regularly put it. our will or our resolve, regardless of the ab-
sence of a clear casus belli.
The Chairman. And this was interpreted to mean if we showed the
will then the North Vietnamese would surrender. I mean, being faced
with such overwhelming power, they would stop. Is that really the way
they were thinking ?
Mr. Thomson. "Would be brought to their knees" was the phrase
that was used.
The Chairman. And, in effect, be willing to settle it on our terms ;
is that correct ? Is that a fair summary ?
Mr. Thomson. That was the hope, yes..
The Chairman. So, again, that was rather a serious mistake in
judgment, too ; wasn't it ?
Mr. Thomson. It was, sir.
The Chairman. Senator Percy says he would like to ask a few more
questions. I am going to have to leave in 5 minutes because I have a
caucus coming up, but you proceed if you like.
Senator Percy. Thank you, sir. I will keep my questions short and
possibly with brief answers we can cover all the areas that I have in
mind at this time.
KEY ISSUES DIVIDING TWO SIDES
What do you see as the key issues that now divide the two sides and
on which agreement must be reached before a settlement can be made
on a negotiated basis ?
Mr. Thomson. Well, the key ultimate issue is who controls the south.
Senator Percy. Is what ?
Mr. Thomson. Who shall control the south, and that is an issue on
which neither side will give way so far.
Senator Percy. So that you are taking a very dim outlook for a
negotiated settlement?
Mr. Thomson. Well, when I say which side controls the south, there
is built into that phrasing a concept of timetable. One has heard over
recent years from high levels of even this administration the thought
of a decent interval, an interval between a settlement that has the look
of nondefeat, and the actual passing of control in the south to the Com-
munist?. Tt sounds cynical and it may well be hypocritical, but there
are those in policy positions who generally believe that the creation
of a decent interval must be item 1 on our agenda because without such
an interval between the settlement and. let us sav, the communization
of the south, the administration would run into severe trouble at home
00
and abroad. It may be correct in its assessment of the home-side con-
sequences, although I doubt it ; but I think it is very unlikely that it is
correct in its assessment of world-wide consequences.
EXTENT OF NORTH VIETNAMESE NEGOTIATIONS FOR PUBLIC RELATIONS
PURPOSES
Senator Percy. To what extent do you think the negotiations have
been carried on by the North Vietnamese simply for the purpose of
public relations?
Mr. Thomson. I think all parties to intense negotiations stress a pub-
lic relations aspect of the negotiations, which is the external look at
the process. One is trying to drum up support, trying to look credible.
There is at the heart of the matter the hope for a happy outcome ; so
I would say that "public relations" would oversimplify Hanoi's
intent.
JASON STUDY GROUP CONCLUSION CONCERNING BLOCKADING NORTH
VIETNAM
Senator Percy. Dr. Gelb. if I can turn to the third alternative, the
one that the President is pursuing, an Institute of Defense Analyses
study that was included in one version of the Pentagon papers con-
cluded that blockading North Vietnam would not work. Would you
care to comment on that ?
Mr. Gelb. That was the conclusion of what was called the Jason
Study Group. They, as you know, not only looked at the blockade
alone but also at an all-out bombing campaign at the same time and I
think the conclusions which they came to are similar to the ones I
offer about the potential effect of President Nixon's current actions.
Senator Percy. We were bombing very close to the China border
back in the Johnson administration, and that involved very grave
risk.
TIME SPAN IN MOVING NORTH VIETNAMESE SUPPLIES SOUTH
The avowed purpose of trying now to engage in this new escalation
is to defend and protect our American forces.
How long would it take supplies ordinarily, if not interdicted as
they came in from China by rail, or knocked out as they passed
through North Vietnam, under conditions today to reach forces using
them against American forces ?
Mr. Gelb. That is how long would it take if they could not be moved
by rail ?
Senator Percy. If they did slip through under present conditions,
how long would it take those supplies to eventualty reach forces of
North Vietnam using those supplies, ammunition, and tank fuel
against the remaining American forces ?
Mr. Gelb. I don't know if I am competent to give that particular
judgment, sir. I do know that from almost 1966, 1967, and 1968, vari-
ous times under President Johnson, authority was granted to strike
everything that moved, trucks and trains, and under those circum-
stances in 1968 at the height of the bombing, the North Vietnamese were
still able to move an enormous amount of supplies down into the south.
56
That is the only basis of comparison that I have.
Senator Percy. But if they are subjected to intensive bombing as
they are now. what is the time span? Can yon get down there in 30
days ? Or does it take 6 months for fuel and ammunition to move all
the way down the country ?
Mr. Gelb. Well, under battle conditions from the northern border
down into the south, it certainly would take more than 10 days and
clearly less than 6 months. The exact time would depend on how many
trucks they had available, whether they traveled at night or during
the day, factors such as that.
1965 CONCERN OVER POSSIBLE CHINESE INTERVENTION
Senator Percy. Professor Thomson, the Pentagon Papers also indi-
cated that in 1965 the President's advisers feared a massive bombing of
North Vietnam would bring Chinese intervention. Was that judgment
a sound judgment at the time?
Mr. Thomson. We had within the Government at the time, Senator
Percy, some very talented kinds of watchers, particularly Allen
Whiting, who had done a remarkable book on Chinese intervention
in the Korean war, and such men as Whiting felt that the tripwire
that would bring China in would be. as I suggested earlier, any U.S.
move that looked as if it might displace and overthrow the regime in
North Vietnam, the established state in North Vietnam, and thereby
endanger Chinese borders.
It was also feared, however, that bombing close to China's border
and the doctrine of hot pursuit might bring us into a situation where
MIG's were stationed across the border on Chinese fields, and Ameri-
can forces would feel compelled to cross that border.
By and large, I think the concern over possible Chinese intervention
was appropriate, and I think by and large that although we came
fairly close, we played that particular game with prudence.
EFFECT OF LATEST ACTIONS ON PRESIDENT'S CHINA POLICY
Senator Percy. From the standpoint of our relationship with China,
the President has enunciated a very clear policy of negotiation rather
than confrontation, and he has gone to extraordinary efforts to further
this objective.
Will Peking be responsive to tourism, to cultural exchanges? There
have been fairly large groups which have left from Mexico recently.
Another group went and came back with glowing reports about how
well they had been received, but so far as I know — other than the
President's trip, the businessmen, the Scott-Mansfield trip and a few
tourists — there has been no further word from Peking.
What effect do you think this latest action bj- the President is likely
to have on moving us slowly, gradually, cautiously, toward further ne-
gotiation rather than confrontation?
Mr. Thomson. Well, I might point out that without much publicity,
small groups of Americans are fairly regularly traveling to China
these days — student groups, Chinese-American scholars and the like.
57
The (lean of China studies in this country. John Fairbank, is depart-
ing with his wife for 2 months in China this week, which is something
of a breakthrough. By and large, though, there is no open faucel for
travel or trade between China and the United States; and Peking. I am
sure, will tend to keep a very tight hand on the closed faucet or the
slim trickle of travelers and traders. It is quite clear that Peking's
pride, Peking's own sense of its worth as an ally, is engaged in the
troubles we are inflicting on North Vietnam.
It is further clear that Peking regards trade and travel and nego-
tiations on all such issues as matters that will be held up until we
shape up, so to speak, from their vantage point. So I can see nothing
but roadblocks to further progress on the Washington-Peking nego-
tiators front as a result of the moves the President made last night.
PROSPECT FOR NEGOTIATIONS WITH SOVIET UNION
Senator Percy. Dr. Gelb, would you care to comment on the pros-
pects for negotiations on very key, important areas of mutual interest
with the Soviet Union and what this will do ? Is this going to have any
effect? Will it have an adverse effect? Will it have a positive effect?
Mr. Gelb. I can't believe it will have a positive effect, I know there
are many who believe that the only way to deal with the Soviet Union
is with a bludgeon and a sword, but it has not been clear to me that
that approach has proved very successful. I think both nations over the
last couple of years have indicated a greater willingness to talk to each
other about common interests, even though conflicting, really conflict-
ing interests do exist.
I can't help but believe that by pushing the Soviet Union into this
box, a box which the President himself feels is ridden with humiliation,
can do nothing except injure relations between us and the Soviet
Union.
Senator, may I ask a question of my colleague ?
Senator Percy. You certainly can.
president's saying nothing about china in speech
Mr. Gelb. The President gave so much attention to the Soviet Union
at the end of his speech; he said nothing about China. How would you
explain that ?
Mr. Thomson. Well, I am convinced that the master planners in
the White House assume that Peking's greatest sense of threat comes
from those nearly 1 million Soviet troops along China's 4,500-mile
frontier with the Soviet Union and from the saber rattlers in the
Kremlin.
Clearly, Mr. Nixon does not want to jeopardize his relations with
China, but he does feel quite obviously that he can go fairly far in
twitting Moscow without bringing a threat to bear on Peking.
My fear, however, is that they may very much overplay and over-
estimate Peking's tolerance of our actions in Southeast Asia and Pe-
king's obsession with the Soviet Union.
Senator Percy. Your testimony has been extremely helpful and
thought-provoking for us.
58
tomorrow's witnesses
These hearings will now be recessed until 10 o'clock tomorrow morn-
ing. Our witnesses tomorrow on the same subject will be Professor
Schlesinger of City University of New York and Professor Chomsky
of MIT.
INVITATION TO ADMINISTRATION WITNESSES
I would ask the staff of the committee to indicate to the Administra-
tion the suggestion that I have made and the invitation of the chair-
man for any Administration witnesses who would like to appear in the
course of these hearings, so that we may have as balanced a picture as
we can possibly have. I appreciate the chairman's willingness to have
that done.
(Whereupon, at 1 :10 p.m., the hearing was adjourned, to reconvene
at 10 a.m., Wednesday, May 10, 1972.)
CAUSES, ORIGINS. AND LESSONS OF THE VIETNAM
WAR
WEDNESDAY, MAY 10, 1972
United States Senate,
Committee on Foreign Relations.
Washington, D.C.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., in room 4221, New
Senate Office Building, Senator J. W. Fulbright (chairman) presiding.
Present: Senators Fulbright, Symington, Pell, Javits, and Percy.
The Chairman. The committee will come to order.
OPENING STATEMENT
Today we are continuing the hearings on the causes, origins, and les-
sons of' the Vietnam war. Because of the President's Monday night
message to the country, yesterday's hearings dealt to a great extent
with current U.S. actions in Vietnam. Such a trend in the discussion
was to be expected, given the fact that present policy in Indochina
represents a fairly consistent continuation of our earlier policies. For
instance, many of the original rationales for intervention remain with
us, however implausible they may seem today ; and, of course, the un-
learned lessons of the Vietnam experience continue to haunt us. We
will, therefore, continue in a historical vein to address the question of
how we became involved in Vietnam, bearing in mind the direct rele-
vance of such an approach to current policy.
We are fortunate indeed to have with us today two witnesses who
have devoted considerable study to the field of Vietnam policy.
Our first witness will be Professor Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., from the
City University of New York, who was formerly an aide to Presidents
Kennedy and Johnson. He will be followed by Professor Noam Chom-
sky of MIT, author of numerous scholarly works in this field.
Gentlemen, we are very pleased that you have been willing to come
here. The coincidence of your appearance with the developments in
Vietnam only adds, I think, greater interest to your testimony.
Dr. Schlesinger, will you begin, please ?
STATEMENT OF PR0EESS0R ARTHUR M. SCHLESINGER, JR.,
CITY UNIVERSITY 0E NEW YORK
Mr. Schlesinger. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Your entire statement will be put in the record as
written and you may do as you please — comment on it or read it.
(59)
S3-605— 73-
60
Mr. Schlesinger. I will summarize portions and read portions. The
statement is too long for a full reading.
As an historian, I want first to commend the committee for under-
taking this complex and difficult inquiry. I am sure that future his-
torians will be mystified when, looking back at the 1950's and 1960's —
even the early 1970?s — they try to figure out what led successive Amer-
ican Presidents to suppose that our national interest and security
were so vitally involved in the fate of a small country on the mainland
of Southeastern Asia as to justify the blood, destruction, atrocity and
agony for which American policy has been responsible. I have no
doubt that these hearings, and any conclusions the committee may
draw, will provide material of inestimable importance for scholars in
generations to come.
Let me also say at the start that there is, in my judgment, no single
answer to our problem. What I will endeavor to do is disentangle
what seem to one historian significant threads of thought and policy
that led us to so ghastly a culmination in Southeastern Asia. Limita-
tions of time will oblige me to make my points quickly and crisply
but, I hope, without undue oversimplification. I must add that I am
conscious that I myself at earlier times have shared some of the illu-
sions I will discuss today. I only wish that I had understood earlier
what I think I understand now ; and I certainly do not seek to exempt
myself from a share, however trivial, of personal responsibility for
going along with directions of policy whose implications did not be-
come evident to me until the summer of 1965.
U.S. CONVICTIONS ABOUT POSTWAR ROLE
The United States entered the postwar world with two leading con-
victions about its future world role: the conviction that the United
States had an obligation to create and defend a global structure of
peace and the conviction that the United States had a democratizing
mission to the world. These were perfectly honorable convictions.
However, the pressures and temptations of the postwar situation led
to the catastrophic overextension and misapplication of valid princi-
ples, a process that culminated horribly in the Indochina tragedy.
PRINCIPLE OF COLLECTIVE SECURITY
Let us look first at the principle of collective security. The foreign
policy of the U.S. since the Second World War has been in the hands
of the generation which came of age between 1914, the start of the
First World War, and 1953, the end of the Korean war. Every gen-
eration is the prisoner of its own experience; and for this generation
the critical international experience was the defense of the peace
system against one or another aggressive power. Peace, it was said,
was indivisible; appeasement would only encourage aggression. Ag-
gression anywhere, if unchecked and unpunished, would threaten the
independence of nations everywhere. The preservation of peace, there-
fore, required the reestablishment of the peace system through collec-
tive action against aggression by the world community.
This was the view of the world envisaged by Woodrow Wilson, the
view implied by the Stimson doctrine, the view substantiated by the
61
failure of appeasement at Munich, the view argued by President
Roosevelt during the Second World War, the view reasserted in the
Truman doctrine, the view doggedly reaffirmed by President Johnson
in the 1960's and, indeed, the view" expressed by President Nixon in
the last couple of weeks.
I know that to the young discussion of international affairs in these
formalistic terms seems so unreal that they presume this language
must be a mask for other and unavowed motives. But it would be, I
think, a mistake not to recognize that, especially for the generation
that grew up under the shadow of Hitler, these words have meaning.
Nor, I trust, will we as a nation abandon the objective of collective
security.
Yet, as we consider Vietnam, we see that something obviously
went wrong with the application of the doctrine. Some would date the
beginning of the degeneration of the collective security idea with the
Truman doctrine of 1947. In a sense, this was so, though I would
emphasize "in a sense" because the inflation in the Truman period
was in words rather than in deeds. While President Truman declared
that "it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples
who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or out-
side pressure." Truman himself was selective in the employment of
this drastic proposition. He did not himself construe it in a crusading
way, applying it neither to Eastern Europe nor to China as it was
applied to Greece and Turkey. Moreover, Truman, after carrying
through the greatest demobilization in history in 1945-46. kept defense
spending thereafter under tight control. In 1947-50. national security
expenditures averaged only $13 billion a year. By 1949 the Army was
down to 10 active divisions. This was hardly the military posture of a
state bent on establishing a world empire. The Korean war changed
all that, and in the fifties the United States Government began to
live up to the rhetoric of the Truman doctrine.
COLLECTIVE SECURITY IDEA LOST LIMITATIONS
The original collective security idea had been that clearcut acts of
aggression by major states required collective intervention to restore
an equilibrium of power. In the fifties this idea lost its limitations.
It was subtly transformed into the doctrine that almost any form of
foreign trouble, whether caused by large or small states, whether or
not the elements of a balance of power situation existed, whether the
trouble was external or internal in origin, required intervention, if
necessary, by America alone.
Secretary of State Dulles carried this generalization to the point of
absurdity and danger, making it a systematic policy to overcommit
American power and prestige all around the world.
The success of communism anywhere, Dulles felt, would put in ques-
tion the will and power of the United States everywhere. It was in
this mood that, having supported the French in Indochina in the years
after 1948, we began to replace the French after 1954. The National
Security Council had already in early 1952 declared that "Communist
domination, by whatever means, of all Southeast Asia would seriously
endanger in the short term, and critically endanger in the longer term,
U.S. security interests."
62
The reason for this, in the NSC view, was what would later be
termed the domino effect : "the loss of any single country would prob-
ably lead to relatively swift submission ... by the remaining coun-
tries of this group." This remained the perspective in which the
American Government saw Vietnam.
If it was hard to argue that the threat presented 03^ the Viet Cong
and Ho Chi Minh was comparable to the threat presented by Hitler
in the thirties, our Government responded by inflating the threat and
contending that our adversaries in Vietnam actually constituted the
spearhead of a planned Chinese system of expansion in East Asia. This
was the NSC view in the early fifties.
President Eisenhower wrote in his memoirs that the conflict —
began gradually, with Chinese intervention, to assume its true complexion of a
struggle between Communism and non-Communist forces rather than one between
a colonial power and colonists who were intent on attaining independence.
By 1967 Vice President Humphrey could cry :
The threat to world peace is militant, aggressive Asian Communism, with its
headquarters in Peking, China. The aggression of North Vietnam is but the most
current and immediate action of militant Asian countries.
As he left the White House, President Eisenhower told President-
elect Kennedy that if the United States could not persuade other
nations to join in saving Laos from Communism, then it should be
ready "as a last desperate hope, to intervene unilaterally." This further
notion, the notion that America, as the peculiar and appointed guard-
ian of world peace, was entitled to act militarily on its own, repre-
sented the final and fatal perversion of the original doctrine of collec-
tive security.
Soon President Kennedy was saying in his inaugural address that
Americans —
shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend,
oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and success of liberty.
Four years later, President Johnson said :
History and our own achievements have thrust upon us the principal respon-
sibility for protection of freedom on earth.
By now a useful and limited idea had been corrupted by messianism
and America was assuming a role as judge, jurj^, and executioner for
all mankind.
In this messianic spirit, we abandoned any realistic assessment of
our stakes in Southeastern Asia. Nothing is' more distressing in the
Pentagon Papers than the apparent failure of any administration,
including the present one, to recalculate the exact nature of our in-
terest in Indochina, to consider what, in hard fact, the consequences
would be for the United States of the communization of Vietnam.
In retrospect, one can only feel that, if the containment of China
were a problem, a strong Communist Vietnam would offer more ef-
fective resistance to Chinese pressures than any of the shoddy regimes
we have sponsored in Saigon.
DEMOCRATIZING MISSION
Let's look now at the democratizing mission. The messianic compo-
nent in American foreign policy was compounded by the idea of
63
America's regenerative mission to suffering mankind. Like- collective
security, this was in its original form a valuable idea. But in its orig-
inal form the American mission was to reform the world by the Amer-
ican example, not by Americans moving into other countries and
setting things straight.
Then the experience of military occupation after the second "World
"War and especially, I think, the occupation of Japan began to
strengthen American confidence in our talent for nation building. We
soon supposed that we had not only the power but the wisdom to enter
alien cultures and reconstruct them according to our own standards
and values. Thus, Vice President Humphrey spoke in 1966 about "re-
alizing the dream of the Great Society in the great area of Asia,
not just here at home." He added :
We ought to be excited about this challenge because here is where we can
put to work some of our ideas of how a — nation building, of new concepts of
education, development of local government, the improvement of the health
standards of people and really the achievement and the fulfillment of social
justice.
This was authentic language of American social reform. But it also
represented the fatal perversion of a sound idea. It beguiled us into
what ma}^ be called sentimental imperialism, the belief that we knew
better than other people did what was good for them. In this process
the limited policy of helping others to help themselves grew into the
unlimited policy of imposing our own preferences on others; so that
if the Vietnamese would not out of respect for our superior wisdom
do what we thought was good for them, we were determined to make
them do it out of obedience to our superior strength. The army major,
standing in the rubble of Ben Tre, summed up the ultimate logic of
American messianism : "It became necessary to destroy the town to
save it."
ABSOLUTIST AXTI-COMMUXTSM
Another factor that contributed to the propensity toward messian-
ism was the rise of absolutist anti-communism. The delusion that
America was the appointed protector of world freedom received addi-
tional impetus from the contention that world freedom was threatened
by the ambitions of the centralized movement of world communism.
Let me be quite clear on this. The communism of the forties, which
for- purposes of precision Ave should call Stalinism, was not only a
cruel and ugly tyranny in Soviet Russia but was also a relatively
coordinated international movement. Anti-Stalinism would seem to me
a moral necessit}- for any believer in democracy. And in the forties
Stalinism was a perfectly genuine threat in Europe, not in the sense
that the Red Army was likely to invade the west but in the sense that,
given the economic and social disorganization of "Western Europe,
Communist parties might well have come to power in countries like
France and Italy.
But practical resistance to Stalinism was soon enveloped by the
view that Communism was a changeless, unalterable, monolithic doc-
trine of total discipline and total evil. This absolutist view led to the
conclusion that every Communist party or state by definition must
forever be the obedient instrument of the Soviet Union. Tt led Dean
Rusk as an Assistant Secretarv of State in 1951 to call the Communist
64
regime in Peking "a colonial Russian government, a Slavic Manchukuo
on a larger scale." It led to the illusion that guerrilla wars could not
just be local insurrections in which local leadership responded to local
grievances but must rather represent "wars of national liberation"
organized by Moscow to test the will of the United States. Once again
a rational idea underwent fatal expansion and perversion.
Moreover, though the reality of a centralized world Communist
movement hardly outlived Stalin himself, indeed had begun to crumble
some years before Stalin's death, the American government continued
for many years to operate in terms of the old stereotype. When I
served in the Kennedy Administration in the early sixties, I used to
implore the State Department to stop going on about the Sino-Soviet
bloc when it was abundantly evident that the Sino-Soviet bloc had
ceased to exist, if indeed it ever existed. Yet people today — in some of
his speeches, President Nixon himself — still talk about communism as
if it were some sort of undifferentiated, centralized threat to the United
States.
In the contemporary age of polycentrism, there is no longer any
such thing as world Communism. A Communist takeover no longer
means the automatic extention of Russian or of Chinese power. Every
Communist government, every Communist party, has been set free-
to respond to its own national concerns and to pursue its own national
interests. Diverging national interests have proved to be more power-
ful than common ideologies. And this, of course, greatly transforms
the nature of the problem that Communist movements present to
American security. Our failure to recognize the rise of polycentrism
caused us to misconceive the character of a local conflict in Indochina,
to inflate, its importance, to misrepresent the degree of American
interest in its outcome and to enter that war with a ferocity out of
all proportion to its actual consequence for our national security.
Absolutist anti-Communism had another effect which should be
noted here : It led to the purging from our government of those officials
who best understood the phenomena of Asian Communism. A leading
member of the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations recently re-
marked to me that one reason the U.S. Government performed with
so much more intelligence during the Cuban missile crisis than it did
during the Indochina war was that in the case of the missile crisis
it had the benefit of the counsel of men like Ambassadors Thompson,
Bohlen and Harriman who knew the Soviet Union and could give
sound advice about its probable purposes and reactions.
In the case of the Far East, we had no equivalent experts on China
and the Government consequently operated on the basis of theories
which we know to have been wildly exaggerated. Had not John
Foster Dulles drummed our China experts out of the Foreign Service—
and this committee recently had the opportunity to see what able and
patriotic men thej^ are — I cannot believe that we would have pursued
the same policy of arrogance and blunder that got us so deep into
Vietnam.
INSTITUTIONAL MESSIANISM
Institutional messianism: Ideas tend to become embodied in institu-
tions; and the institutions often survive long after the ideas have
become obsolete. In the fifties the absolutist anti-Communist philoso-
65
phy took root in a group of governmental agencies — the State Depart-
ment, purged by Dulles of active dissenters ; the Defense Department ;
the National Security Council; the Central Intelligence Agency — all
of which developed vested institutional interests in the theory of
militarily expansionist world Communism. The cold war conferred
power, appropriations and public influence on these agencies and by
the natural laws of bureaucracies their concern for the care and feeding
of the cold war inevitably solidified.
PROCESS OF BUREAUCRATIC AGGRANDIZEMENT
The success of CIA clandestine operations in the fifties in Iran,
Guatemala. Egypt, and Laos, doubtless fed the American Govern-
ment's convictions both of its ability and its right to decide the destiny
of other nations. I would suggest that the very language of the cold
war bureaucracies — a brisk, technocratic patois, well designed to con-
ceal the human implications of national actions — contributed to the
dehumanization of American policy and laid a spuriously antiseptic
patina over the horrible things we began to do in Vietnam.
This process of bureaucratic aggrandizement began to give the ex-
ecutive branch of Government delusions of grandeur. Persuaded of its
own exclusive grasp of these arcane matters, protected by a secrecy
system to which it alone held the key, it increasingly regarded the Na-
tion's foreign policy as its own private prerogative.
I have no doubt that historians and political scientists who had ar-
gued uncritical versions of the theory of the strong presidency — and
here I must certainly include myself— contributed to these delusions ;
and I cannot escape the impression that Congress during most of these
years amiably acquiesced in the situation almost with relief at the
avoidance of responsibility.
When one reads the Pentagon papers, one notes that Congress
seemed to exist in the minds of the executive branch primarily as an
irritating and obtuse organism to be cajoled and hoodwinked when it
could not be ignored. The notion that better consultation might have
produced better policy did not seem to occur to our leaders. Yet, on the
record, the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations has shown a good
deal more wisdom about the Indochina War over the last half dozen
years than the National Security Council.
ROLE OF MILITARY ESTABLISHMENT IN INDOCHINA
Of all the bnreacracies. I would guess the one that played the larg-
est role, at least in the later stages, in the intensification of our role in
Indochina, was the military establishment. Historically, this military
influence over foreign policy was something of a novelty. But the Sec-
ond World War had brought a great military establishment into exist-
ence. the cold war made it permanent, and over the last generation this
establishment has had excessive and dangerous weight in our councils
of state.
For many years the military have absorbed the largest portion of
the Federal budget. Defense contracts have enlisted large sections of
the business community in the military effort. Congress, until recently,
has given the military nearly everything it wanted. Our military
66
Leaders have conned both the executive and legislative branches of
Government into building enormous installations, increasing v irrele-
vant in the missile age, all over the world— and have insisted tnat , as
"nf price wfmust pay, we must do nothing to offend such spendid
democratic countries as Greece, Portugal, Brazil and South Africa.
They have opposed agreements designed to slow up the arms race.
They forever demand new systems of offense and defense. They invoke
the emotions of virility and patriotism to reinforce their importunities.
The forward role of the military has been strikingly evident in Viet-
nam. First, they succeeded in defining the problem in the terms stated
by General Wheeler in November 1962 :
It is fashionable in some quarters to say that the problems in Southeast Asia
are primarily political and economic. I do not agree. The essence of the problem
in Vietnam is military.
Once unleased, the military machine established its own momentum.
The institutional pressure for further escalation, the institutional de-
sire to try out weapons, tactics and personnel, the institutional capacity
for self-delusion, demonstrated most recently by General Abrams,
about the prospects for military success and the existence of that light
at the end of the tunnel— all this carried us further and further into the
quagmire. . , ■-,■,■, i
Let me add, though, that the military do not inevitably control
American policy. They are professional men trying to do ^professional
job and making exactly the arguments the nature of their profession
requires. Their pressure is often effective in amorphous situations and
with irresolute leaders. But it is foolish to be surprised by the advice
they give or to blame them for it. It is far more to the point to blame
the civilian leaders who take their advice.
Let me add, too, that I am not talking about the so-called military-
industrial complex. This formulation implies that the military are
nothing more than stooges of American capitalism. Only an old Lenin-
ist like President Eisenhower could believe that, I am talking about the
military as a quite independent factor in the formation of policy, a
force in its own right operating according to its own internal impera-
tives and not at the bidding of American business, which had never
been deeply committed to the Indochina war and in recent years has, I
believe, turned predominantly against it.
ECONOMIC IMPERIALISM ?
Economic imperialism ? In this connection I should perhaps mention
a thesis proposed in some accounts of our involvement in Vietnam— the
thesis that the Indochina war was the result of the quest of American
capitalism for world hegemony.
It is true that American overseas investments have grown remark-
ably in the postwar period, from $8.4 billion in 1945 to $78 billion in
197*0. It is, of course, hard to contend that America went into Vietnam
to gain markets or protect investments in a country where we have had
little of either. Indeed, we have spent more money on that war than
American business could hope to get out of Vietnam in a century. But
the more sophisticated exponents of the economic argument offer a
kind of domino thesis of their own. They say that, because defeat
in Vietnam would jeopardize American markets and investments
67
throughout the Third World, the economic necessities of an expanding
capitalist order have compelled the American Government to embark
on a course of ruthless counterrevolution.
Close analysis of the figures shows, however, that the dependence
of American capitalism on the underdeveloped world, in terms either
of trade or of investment, is very limited indeed. Two thirds of Ameri-
can exports go to industrialized rather than to developing countries.
Sales to the Third World amount to about 3 percent of our annual
national output. As for American investment in the Third World,
this represents a declining fraction of our total foreign investment:
35 percent in I960 and only 28 percent in 1970.
Of Third World investment, 40 percent is in petroleum. If this is
excluded, only about one-sixth of American overseas investment is in
developing nations, and few American businessmen today seem inter-
ested in increasing the proportion. Insofar as the future of American
capitalism depends on the outside world, it depends on markets and
investments in other industrialized countries and not on what may
happen in the Third World.
Nor can it be said that the prosecution of the Indochina war was
necessary for domestic prosperity. Quite the contrary. The economic
consequences of Vietnam have been inflation, balance of payments
trouble and a pervading distortion of the economy. Nor need the
termination of the war mean depression at home. At the end of the
Second World War. between 1945 and 1946. governmental purchases
of goods and services declined from $83 billion to $31 billion, a sum
equal to almost one-quarter of the gross national product. If our econ-
omy could absorb a decline of such magnitude then it could easily
absorb a decline in war spending of about 2 percent of gross national
product today.
It must be added that the Pentagon papers, so far as I know, record
no instances of business intervention in American Vietnam policy and
that any discussion among governmental officials of an American
economic interest in southeastern Asia was glancing and perfunctory.
Insofar as our government confronted the question of the American
interest, it saw that interest as political, strategic and symbolic, not
economic.
POSTWAR AMERICAN IMPERIAL IMPULSE
To sum up, I would suggest that the postwar American imperial
impulse, which came to its terrible culmination in Indochina, arose
from a number of pressures and temptations — pressures and tempta-
tions exerted by the vacuums of power created by the Second World
War ; by the misapplication of a valid belief in the necessity of creat-
ing an international structure in which the United States would accept
her full global responsibilities; by the grandiose overextension of
America's mission to uplift suffering mankind; by the reformist faith
in the American capacity to instruct and rebuild other nations; by
the quite real menace of Stalinist communism; by the count erideology
of anti-communism, persisting in rigid and absolutist form long after
the circumstances that had produced it had begun to change ; and by
the institutionalization of the cold war, especially in the increasingly
influential militarv establishment.
68
U.S. INVOLVEMENT IN VIETNAM NOT INEVITABLE
The further question arises: did these diverse factors render our
involvement in Vietnam inevitable? Were these forces shaping our
policy so powerful that any Administration in Washington would
have been compelled to pursue the course that was, in fact, pursued?
My answer to that is no. The Indochina tragedy was, in my judg-
ment, the consequence of national illusions and delusions, not of na-
tional necessities. The road to disaster had many turnings.
We could, for example, have followed the policy recommended be-
fore his death by President Koosevelt and opposed the restoration of
French rule in Indochina. We could have responded to the appeals of
Ho Chi Minh in 1945-46. Given the urgencies incited by the Korean
war, some measure of American involvement in supporting the French
in the early '50s was probably hard to avoid, nor was the provision of
economic assistance to South Vietnam after 1954 a necessary cause of
subsequent disaster.
VIETNAM POLICY OF KENNEDY ADMINISTRATION
I do not regard its Vietnam policy as one of the Kennedy adminis-
tration's finest hours. In retrospect, it is clear that we all overreacted
to Khrushchev's truculent speech of January 1961. This was the speech
predicting the victory of Communism through "'wars of national lib-
eration in the Third World, the speech to which the Kennedy in-
augural was essentially an answer.
It would now appear that Khrushchev was engaged in a complicated
maneuver with regard to China; but Washington, unaware of the
depth of the Sino-Soviet split at the time, interpreted the speech as a
challenge to the West. The feeling in Washington then was that the
nuclear standoff excluded the possibility of nuclear war, that the west-
ern response in Korea had reduced the chance of limited war, and that
if a solution could only be found for guerrilla war, a future of peace
might be assured.
There thus arose the counterinsurgency mystique, an interesting but
dangerous idea and one which Americans were not qualified by history
or temperament to carry through. At the same time, the shift in mili-
tary strategy from predominant reliance on nuclear weapons to flexible
response and the consequent diversification of our Armed Forces,
though intended to reduce the risk of nuclear war, had the ironic effect
of making possible marginal ventures like Vietnam.
I do not recall, though, any cockiness or relish in the Kennedy White
House about getting involved in Vietnam. There was enough else to do
in those years. Moreover, it must be remembered that President Ken-
nedy's decision to send in advisers at the end of 1961 was in part a
tradeoffs the national-security bureaucracy for its sullen acceptance
of the Kennedy policy of neutralizing Laos. Kennedy rejected the rec-
ommendations of the Taylor-Rostow report for American armed inter-
vention in 1961. Indeed, less than 100 Americans were killed in combat
in Vietnam during the entire Kennedy presidency. On the other hand,
he did acquiesce in 1962 in the definition of the" Vietnam problem as
primarily military, a definition which, it should be added, govern-
GO
mental officials like Averell Harriman and Roger Hilsman vigorously
opposed.
It seems to me fairly fruitless to speculate what would have
happened had President Kennedy lived. It is impossible to predict
what dead presidents would do about situations that take a new form
after their death ; it is hard enough to predict what living presidents
will do about such situations. I suppose the safest guess as to what John
Kennedy's line would have been is to look at the line taken by his broth-
ers after his death.
There can be no question that President Kennedy had the capacity
to refuse escalation. He showed that at the time of the Bay of Pigs
and again at the time of the Cuban missile crisis. I know, too, that his
memory of Vietnam under French rule made him feel there were limits
beyond which one could expand a white military presence without unit-
ing the energies of local nationalism against the intruder. I find it
hard, God knows, to believe that Vietnam would have altered his pru-
dent and rational habits in the use of power. But the question of what
he would have done had he lived remains insoluble.
I have some remarks about the Johnson administration and about
the comment that the system worked in Vietnam but, in the interest
of time, I will leave that for the printed record and simply sum up
my views about the question whether or not the "system" worked.
POLITICAL BUREAUCRATIC SYSTEM IX WASHINGTON FAILED
In my view, the system, that is, the political bureaucratic system in
Washington, failed dismally. It failed to provide any systematic and
serious assessment of American stakes in Vietnam. It failed in the
political and military tactics it produced. It failed in its estimate and
forecast of the character of the problem and the magnitude of the dif-
ficulty. It failed to foresee the acute instability of the Diem regime, or
the fiasco of the strategic hamlet program or the attacks on the Budd-
hists in 1963, or the futility of the bombing policy, or the failure of
search-and-destroy tactics, or the capacity of the enemy year after year
to replenish his losses and enlarge his effort.
It was wrong in believing that the South Vietnamese under Diem
had the will to defend itself, that U.S. pressure could introduce reform
into the rigid minds of Saigon mandarins that if we pounded long and
hard enough the other side would cry "uncle."
It was terribly wrong in regarding Hanoi and the Viet Cong as the
spearhead of Chinese aggression. The system could not even foresee
developments within the Saigon regime itself. As the Pentagon study
says,
The shifts of loyalties, coups, rebellions and major changes of public figures
often caught the embassy by surprise. It had no effective system, either through
overt or covert contacts, for finding out what was going on.
The system, in short, did not offer presidents intelligent or useful
counsel and it reinforced and compounded illusion. In my judgment,
the Vietnamese adventure was marked much more by ignorance, mis-
judgment, muddle and, to be frank, stupidity than it Avas by efficiency,
foresight, awareness, and calculation.
70
LESSONS OF VIETNAM
What are the lessons of Vietnam? To sum up very quickly, (1) that
everything in the world is not of equal importance to us. For nearly
a decade we have given too large a share of our attention and resources
to a marginal problem on the mainland of Asia while our position has
steadily deteriorated in parts of the world far more vital to our na-
tional security.
(2) That we cannot do everything in the world. Vietnam should
teach us that in the last half of the 20th century armed white men can-
not decide the destiny of countries in the Third World. Let us hope
that it will forever chasten what your chairman has well termed the
"arrogance of power."
(3) That we cannot be the permanent guarantor of stability in a
world of turbulence and change. We must reconcile ourselves to an
age of local revolution and local war in which many terrible things
will take place that the United States simply lacks the power to pre-
vent or the wisdom to cure.
(4) That all problems in the world are not military problems and
that military force is not usually the most effective form of national
power. So long as we continue to define world problems in military
terms, so long will we strengthen the influence of our own military
establishment and plunge the nation into further military interven-
tion. We should undertake military intervention only (a) when the
national security of the United States is directly and indisputedly
involved ; (b) when the people whom we think we are supporting: dis-
play a capacity for resistance themselves; and (c) when, in addition,
there are reasonable prospects for success — all conditions rejecter! nnd
trampled upon by those who made American military policy for Viet-
nam.
(5) That if wo must nsfht, we must rigorously maintain a due and
rational proportion between our means and our ends. I do not much
like the wholesale distribution of moral judgments in the realm of for-
eign policy, but I have no doubt that the Indochina war became an
immoral war when we began to violate the principle of proportion-
ality, when we began to regard technology as a substitute for policy,
when the means employed and the destruction wrought grew out of
any defensible relationship to the interests involved and the ends
sought. We will have to live with the horror of Vietnam for the rest
of our lives.
(6) Finally, that foreign policy is not the private property of the
Executive Branch of government. The President must stop making
decisions of war and peace without effective consultation with the
American Congress. He must stop withholding information about
American action and policy essential to wise and informed judgment
by the Congress and the electorate. Congress must participate, as in
recent years it has sadly failed to participate, in the control both of
foreign policy and of the government's secrecy system.
Perhaps the lessons of Vietnam can best be summed up in the state-
ment that President Kennedy made in November 1961, a statement
which, in my belief, expressed his true views on this matter far more
accurately than the grandiloquent rhetoric of the inaugural address,
when he said :
71
We must face the fact that the United States is neither omnipotent nor omni-
scient— that we are only 6 percent of the world's population — that we cannot im-
pose our will upon the other 94 percent of mankind — that we cannot right every
wrong or reverse each adversity — and that, therefore, there cannot be an Ameri-
can solution to every world problem.
Thank you.
(Dr. Schlesinger s prepared statement follows :)
Prepared Statement of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., on the Origins of the
Vietnam War
My name is Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. I have been since 1966 Albert Schweitzer
Professor of the Humanities at the City University of New York. From 1961 to
19(34 I served as Special Assistant to President Kennedy and, briefly, to Presi-
dent Johnson. Though I have had other stretches of government service, I am
primarily a writer and historian.
As an historian, I want first to commend the Committee for undertaking this
complex and difficult inquiry. I am sure that future historians will be mystified
when, looking back at the 1950s and 1960s (even the early 1970s), they try to
figure out what led successive American Presidents to suppose that our national
interest and security were so vitally involved in the fate of a small country on
the mainland of Southeast Asia as to justify the blood, destruction, atrocity
and agony for which American policy has been responsible. I have no doubt that
these hearings — and any conclusions the Committee may draw — will provide
material of inestimable importance for scholars in generations to come.
Let me also say at the start that there is, in my judgment, no single answer
to our problem. What I will endeavor to do is disentangle what seem to one
historian significant threads of thought and policy that led us to so ghastly
a culmination in Southeast Asia. Limitations of time will oblige me to make
my points quickly and crisply but, I hope, without undue oversimplification.
I must add that I am conscious that I myself at earlier times have shared some
of the illusions I will discuss today. I only wish that I had understood earlier
what I think I understand now ; and I certainly do not seek to exempt myself
from a share, however trivial, of personal responsibility for going along with
directions of policy whose implications did not become evident to me until the
summer of 1965.
At the end of the Second World War, the traditional equilibrium of world
power was in disarray. In the wake of war there emerged great vacuums of
power — in Europe, in Asia, in Africa. At the same time, the war left only two
nations with the capacity to fill those vacuums of power — America and Russia.
Each came out of the war with military strength, political and ideological self-
confidence and the habits of global assessment and global action.
The United States entered the post-war world with two leading convictions
about its future world role : the conviction that the United States had an
obligation to create and defend a global structure of peace; and the conviction
that the United States had a democratizing mission to the world. These were
perfectly honorable convictions. However, the pressures and temptations of the
postwar situation led to the catastrophic overextension and misapplication of
valid principles — a process that culminated horribly in the Indochina tragedy.
COLLECTIVE SECURITY
The foreign policy of the United States since the Second World War has been
in the hands of the generation which came of age between 1914, the start of
the First World War, and 1953. the end of the Korean War. Every generation is
the prisoner of its own experience ; and for this generation the critical inter-
national experience was the defense of the peace system against one or another
aggressive power. Peace, it was said, was indivisible: appeasement would only
encourage aggression ; aggression anywhere, if unchecked and unpunished, would
threaten the independence of nations everywhere. The preservation of peace
therefore required the re-establishment of the peace system through collective
action against aggression by the world community.
This was the view of the world envisaged by Woodrow Wilson, the view
implied by the Stimson Doctrine, the view substantiated by the failure of ap-
72
peasement at Munich, the view argued by President Roosevelt during the Second
World War, the view reasserted in the Truman Doctrine, the view doggedly
reaffirmed by President Johnson in the sixties and, indeed, the view expressed
by President Nixon in recent days as he explained his re-escalation of air attacks
on North Vietnam. The United States, he said, was "destined" to play a "great
role" in "helping to build a new structure of peace." The North Vietnamese
offensive was "a clear case of naked and unprovoked aggression across an inter-
national border." If it succeeds, "other countries will be encouraged to do ex-
actly the samething — in the Mideast, in Europe, and in other international
danger spots. ... If Communist aggression fails, it will discourage others
to do [from doing?] the same thing."
I know that to the young discussion of international affairs in these formal-
istic terms seems so unreal that they presume this language must be a mask for
other and unavowed motives. But it would be, I think, a mistake not to recognize
that, especially for the generation that grew up under the shadow of Hitler,
these words have meaning. Nor, I trust, will we as a nation abandon the objec-
tive of collective security.
Yet, as we consider Vietnam, we see that something obviously went wrong
with the application of the doctrine. Some would date the beginning of the de-
generation of the collective security idea with the Truman Doctrine of 1947. In
a sense this was so, though I would emphasize "in a sense" because the inflation
in the Truman period was in words rather than in deeds. While President Tru-
man declared that "it must be the policy of the United States to support free
peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or outside
pressure," Truman himself was selective in the employment of this drastic
proposition. He did not himself construe it in a crusading way, applying it
neither to Eastern Europe nor to China as it was applied to Greece and Turkey.1
Moreover, Truman, after carrying through the greatest demobilization in history
in 1945-46. kept defense spending under tight control. In 1947-50 national-
security expenditures averaged only $13 billion a year. By 1949 the Army was
down to ten active divisions. This was hardly the military posture of a state
bent on establishing a world empire.
The Korean War changed all that, and in the fifties the United States govern-
ment began to live up to the rhetoric of the Truman Doctrine. The original col-
lective security idea had been that clearcut acts of aggression by major states
required collective intervention to restore an equilibrium of power. In the fifties
this idea lost its limitations. It was subtly transformed into the doctrine that
almost any form of foreign trouble, whether caused by large or small states,
whether or not the elements of a balance-of-power situation existed, whether the
trouble was external or internal in origin, required intervention, if necessary, by
America alone. Where President Truman at first applied his Doctrine sparingly,
events, especially Korea, began to generalize it. Secretary of State Dulles car-
ried this generalization to the point of absurdity and danger, making it a sys-
tematic policy to overcommit American power and prestige all around the world.
Assuming that the Soviet Union would exploit situations of local military weak-
ness everywhere, Dulles concluded that aggression could be restrained only if
such situations were shored up at every point by visible military force. He sought
to do this by setting up NATO-like alliances in the Third World. And he charged
this idea with a righteous moralism that encouraged the American people to
construe political questions in ethical terms, local questions in global terms and
relative questions in absolute terms.
The success of communism anywhere, Dulles felt, would put in question the
will and power of the United States everywhere. It was in this mood that, having
supported the French in Indochina in the years after 1948, we began to replace
the French after 1954. The National Security Council had already in early 1952
declared that "communist domination, by whatever means, of all Southeast Asia
would seriously endanger in the short term, and critically endanger in the longer
term, United States security interests." The reason for this, in the NSC view,
was what would later be termed the domino effect: "the loss of any single coun-
try would probably lead to relatively swift submission ... by the remaining
i Indeed, the recent Nixon-Chou En-Lai communique, in pronouncing Formosa a part of
mainland China, "id not go so far as the Truman statement of January 1950 which added
that the United btates would remain neutral even if the Chinese Communists sought to
take the island by force.
73
countries of this group." This remained the perspective in which the American
government saw Vietnam. As President Eisenhower summed up the situation
on April 4, 1959, "The loss of South Vietnam would set in motion a crumbling
process that could, as it progressed, have grave consequences for us We reach
the inescapable conclusion that our own national interests demand some help
from us in sustaining in Vietnam the morale, the economic progress, and the
military strength necessary to its continued existence in freedom."
If it "was hard to argue that the threat presented by the Viet Cong and Ho
Chi Minn was comparable to the threat presented by Hitler in the thirties, our
government responded by inflating the threat and contending that our adversaries
in Vietnam actually constituted the spearhead of a planned Chinese system of
expansion in East Asia. This was the NSC view in the early fifties. President
Eisenhower wrote in his memoirs that the conflict "began gradually, with Chin-
ese intervention, to assume its true complexion of a struggle between Commu-
nism and non-Communists forces rather than one between a colonial power
and colonists who were intent on attaining independence." By 1967 Vice Presi-
dent Humphrey could cry: "The threat to world peace is militant aggres-
sive Asian communism, with its headquarters in Peking, China. . . . The aggres-
sion of North Vietnam is but the most current and immediate action of militant
Asian communism."
As he left the White House, President Eisenhower told President-elect Ken-
nedv that, if the United States could not persuade other nations to join in sav-
ing Laos from communism, then it should be ready "as a last desperate hope, to
intervene unilaterally." This further notion— the notion that America, as the
peculiar and appointed guardian of world peace, was entitled to act militarily on
its own— represented the final and fatal perversion of the original doctrine of
collective security. Soon President. Kennedy was saying in his inaugural address
that Americans "shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, sup-
port any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and success of
liberty." Four years later President Johnson said, "History and our own achieve-
ments' have thrust upon us the principal responsibility for protection of freedom
on earth." By now a useful and limited idea had been corrupted by messianism,
and America' was assuming a role as judge, jury and executioner for all mankind.
In this messianic spirit, we abandoned any realistic assessment of our stakes in
Southeast Asia. Nothing is more distressing in the Pentagon Papers than the
apparent failure of any administration, including the present one, to recalculate
the exact nature of our interest in Indochina — to consider what, in hard fact,
the consequences would be for the United States of the communization of Viet-
nam. In retrospect, one can only feel that, if the containment of China were a
problem, a strong communist Vietnam would offer more effective resistance to
Chinese pressures than any of the shoddy regimes we have sponsored in Saigon.
THE DEMOCRATIZING MISSION
The messianic component in American foreign policy was compounded by the
idea of America's regenerative mission to suffering mankind. Like collective
security, this was in its original form a valuable idea. But in its original form
the American mission was to reform the world by the American example, not
by Americans moving into other countries and setting things straight.
Then the experience of military occupation after the Second World War, and
especially, I think, the occupation of Japan began to strengthen American con-
fidence in our talent for "nation-building." We soon supposed that we had not
only the power but the wisdom to enter alien cultures and reconstruct them
according to our own standards and values. Thus Vice President Humphrey spoke
in 1966 about "realizing the dream of the Great Society in the great area of
Asia, not just here at home." He added, "We ought to be excited about this
challenge, because here is where we can put to work some of our ideas of how
a — nation building, of new concepts of education, development of local govern-
ment, the improvement of the health standards of people, and really the achieve-
ment and the fulfillment of social justice."
This was the authentic language of American social reform. But it also repre-
sented the fatal perversion of a sound idea. It beguiled us into what may be
called sentimental imperialism — the belief that we know better than other
people did what was good for them. In this process the limited policy of help-
ing others to help themselves grew into the unlimited policy of imposing our
74
own preferences on others ; to that, if the Vietnamese would not out of respect
for <>ur superior wisdom do what we thought was good for them, we were deter-
mined to make them do it out of obedience to our superior strength. The Army
major standing in the rubble of Ben Tre summed up the ultimate logic of Ameri-
can messianism: "It became necessary to destroy the town to save it."
ABSOLUTIST ANTI-COMMUNIST
The delusion that America was the appointed protector of world freedom re-
ceived additional impetus from the conviction that world freedom was threatened
by the ambitions of the centralized movement of world communism. Let me be
quire clear on this. The communism of the forties — which for purposes of pre-
cision we should call Stalinism— was not only a cruel and ugly tyranny in Soviet
Russia but was also a relatively coordinated international movement. Anti-
Stalinism would seem to me a moral necessity for any believer in democracy.
And in the forties Stalinism was a perfectly genuine threat in Europe — not in
the sense that the Red Army was likely to invade the west, but in the sense that,
given the economic and social disorganization of Western Europe, Communist
parties might well have come to power in countries like France and Italy.
But practical resistance to Stalinism was soon enveloped by the view that com-
munism was a changeless, unalterable, monolithic doctrine of total discipline and
total evil. This absolutist view led to the conclusion that every communist party
or state by definition must forever be the obedient instrument of the Soviet
Union. It led Dean Rusk as an Assistant Secretary of State in 1951 to call the
communist regime in Peking "a colonial Russian government — a Slavic Man-
chukuo on a larger scale." It led to the illusion that guerrilla wars could not just
be local insurrections in which local leadership responded to local grievances but
must rather represent "wars of national liberation" organized by Moscow to
"test the will" of the United States. Once again a rational idea underwent fatal
expansion and perversion.
Moreover, though the reality of a centralized world communist movement hardly
outlived Stalin himself — indeed, had begun to crumble some years before Stalin's
death — the American government continued for many years to operate in terms
of the old stereotype. When I served in the Kennedy administration in the early
sixties. I used to implore the State Department to stop going on about the
"Kino-Soviet bloc" when it was abundantly evident that the Sino-Soviet bloc
had ceased to exist, if indeed it ever existed. Yet people today — in some of his
speeches, President Nixon himself- — still talk about communism as if it were
some sort of undifferentiated, centralized threat to the United States.
In the contemporary age of polycentrism, there is no longer any such thing as
"world communism." A communist takeover no longer means the automatic ex-
tension of Russian or of Chinese power. Every communist government, every
communist party, has been set free to respond to its own national concerns and
to pursue its own national interests. Diverging national interests have proved to
he more powerful than common ideologies. And this, of course, greatly trans-
forms the nature of the problem that communist movements present to American
security. Our failure to recognize the rise of polycentrism caused us to miscon-
ceive the character of a local conflict in Indochina, to inflate its importance, to
misrepresent the degree of American interest in its outcome and to enter that
war with a ferocity out of all proportion to its actual consequence for our
•;:; i ional security.
Absolutist anti-communism had another effect which should be noted here: it
led to the purging from our government of those officials who best understood
the penomena of Asian communism. A leading member of the Kennedy and
Johnson administrations recently remarked to me that one reason the United
States government performed with so much more intelligence during the Cuban
missile crisis than it did during the Indochina war was that in the case of the
ssile crisis it had the benefit of the counsel of men like Ambassadors Thomp-
son, :' hlen and Harriman who knew the Soviet Union and could give sound ad-
vice aboul its probable purposes and reactions. In the case of the Far East, we
had no equivalent experts on China, and the government consequently operated
on the basis of theories which we now know to have been wildly exaggerated. Had
not John Foster Dulles drummed our China experts out of the Foreign Service—
and this Committee recently had the opportunity to see what able and patriotic
men they an — T cannot believe that we would have pursued the same policy of
arrogance and blunder that got us so deep into Vietnam.
/o
INSTITUTIONAL MESSIANISM
Ideas tend to become embodied in institutions ; and the institutions often
survive long after the ideas have become obsolete. In the fifties the absolutist
anti-communist philosophy took root in a group of government agencies — the
State Department, purged by Dulles of active dissenters, the Defense Depart-
ment, the National Security Council, the Central Intelligence Agency — all of
which developed vested institutional interests in the theory of militarily expan-
sionist world communism. The Cold War conferred power, appropriations and
public influence on these agencies ; and, by the natural laws of bureaucracies,
their concerns for the care and feeding of the Cold War inevitably solidified.
The success of CIA clandestine operations in the fifties — in Iran, Guatemala.
Egypt, Laos — doubtless fed the American government's conviction both of its
ability and its right to decide the destiny of other nations. I would suggest that
the very language of the Cold War bureaucracies — a brisk technocratic patois,
well designed to conceal the human implications of national actions — -contributed
to the dehumanization of American policy and laid a spuriously antiseptic patina
over the horrible things we began to do in Indochina.
This process of bureaucratic aggrandizement began to give the executive branch
of government delusions of grandeur. Persuaded of its own exclusive grasp of
these arcane matters, protected by a secrecy system to which it alone held the
key, it increasingly regarded the nation's foreign policy as its own private pre-
rogative. I have no doubt that historians and political scientists who had argued
uncritical versions of the theory of the strong Presidency — and here I must
certainly include myself — contributed to these delusions: and I cannot escape
the impression that Congress during most of these years amiably acquiesced
in the situation almost with relief at the avoidance of responsibility. When one
reads the Pentagon Papers, one notes that Congress seemed to exist in the minds
of the executive branch primarily as an irritating and obtuse organism to be
cajoled and hoodwinked when it could not be ignored. The notion that better
consultation might have produced better policy did not seem to occur to out-
leaders. Yet, on the record, the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations has shown
a good deal more wisdom about the Indochina War over the last half dozen
vears than the National Security Council.
Of all the bureaucracies, I would guess the one that played the largest role,
at least in the later stages, in the intensification of our role in Indochina was
the military establishment. Historically this military influence over foreign
policy was "something of a novelty. But the Second World War had brought a
great military establishment into existence, the Cold War made it permanent,
and over the* last generation this establishment has had excessive and danger-
ous weight in our councils of state. For many years the military have absorbed
the largest portion of the federal budget. Defense contracts have enlisted large
sections of the business community in the military effort. Congress, until re-
cently, has given the military nearly everything it wanted. Our military leaders
have'conned both the executive and legislative branches of government into build-
ing enormous installations, increasingly irrelevant in the missile age. all over
the world rand have insisted that, as the price we must pay. we must do nothing
to offend such splendid democratic countries as Greece. Portugal, Brazil and
South Africa). They have opposed agreements designed to slow up the race.
They forever demand new systems of offense and defense. They invoke the emo-
tions of virility and patriotism to reinforce their importunities.
Th« forward role of the military has been strikingly evident m Vietnam.
First they succeeded in defining the problem in the terms stated by General
Wheeler in November 1962: "It is fashionable in some quarters to say that the
problems in Southeast Asia are primarily political and economic. . . . T do not
n^ree The essence of the problem in Vietnam is military." Once unleashed, the
military machine established its own momentum. The institutional pressure for
further escalation, the institutional desire to try out weapons, tactics and per-
sonnel the institutional capacity for self-delusion, demonstrated most recently
by General Abrams, about the prospects for military success and the existence
of that light at the end of the tunnel— all this carried us further and further
inLethrne"nddlirthough, that the military do not inevitably control American
policy Thev are professional men trying to do a professional job and making
exactly the arguments the nature of their profession requires. Their P^asure is
often effective in amorphous situations and with irresolute leaders. But it is
^n-nn.-— 73 fi
76
foolish to be surprised by the advice they give or to blame them for it. It is far
more to the point to blame the civilian leaders who take their advice.
Let me add too that I am not talking about the so-called "military-industrial
complex." This formulation implies that the military are nothing more than
stooges of American capitalism. Only an old Leninist like President Eisenhower
could believe that. I am talking about the military as a quite independent factor
in the formation of policy, a force in its own right operating according to its
own internal imperatives and not at the bidding of American business, which
had never been deeply committed to the Indochina war and in recent years has,
1 believe, turned predominantly against it.
ECONOMIC IMPERIALISM ?
In this connection, I should perhaps mention a thesis proposed in some ac-
counts of our involvement in Vietnam : the thesis that the Indochina war was the
result of the quest of American capitalism for world hegemony.
It is true that American overseas investments have grown remarkably in the
postwar period— from $8.4 billion in 1945 to $78 billion in 1970. It is, of course,
hard to contend that America went into Vietnam to gain markets or protect in-
vestments in a country where we have had little of either. Indeed, we have spent
more money on that war than American business could hope to get out of Vietnam
in a century. But the more sophisticated exponents of the economic argument
offer a kind of domino thesis of their own. They say that, because defeat in Viet-
nam would jeopardize American markets and investments throughout the Third
World, the economic necessities of an expanding capitalist order have compelled
the American government to embark on a course of ruthless counter-revolution.
Close analysis of the figures shows, however, that the dependence of American
capitalism on the underdeveloped world, in terms either of trade or of investment,
is very limited indeed. Two-thirds of American exports go to industrialized rather
than to developing countries ; sales to the Third World amount to about 3 per cent
of our annual national output. As for American investment in the Third World,
this represents a declining fraction of our total foreign investment — 35 per cent in
1960 and only 28 per cent in 1970. Of Third World investment, 40 per cent is in
petroleum : if this is excluded, only about one-sixth of American overseas invest-
ment is in developing nations, and few American businessmen seem interested in
increasing the proportion. In so far as the future of American capitalism depends
on the outside world, it depends on markets and investments in other industrial-
ized countries and not on what may happen in the Third World.
Xor nan it be said that the prosecution of the Indochina war was necessary for
dometic prosperity. Quite the contrary: the economic consequences of Vietnam
have been inflation, balance-of-payments trouble and a pervading distortion of
the economv. Nor need the termination of the war mean depression at home. At
the end of the Second Wold War. between 1945 and 1946, government purchases
of goods and services declined from $83 billion to $31 billion, a sum equal to almost
one-quarter of the gross national product. If our economy could absorb a decline
of such magnitude then, it could easily absorb a decline in war spending of about
2 t>or cent of gross national product today.
It must lie added that the Pentagon Paners, so far as I know, record no instance
of business intervention in American Vietnam policy and that any discussion
among government officials of an American economic interest in Southeast Asia
was glancing and perfunctory. In so far as our government confronted the ques-
tion of the American interest, it saw that interest as political, strategic and
symbolic, not economic.
To sum up. I would suggest that the post-war American imperial impulse, which
came to its terrible culmination in Indochina, arose from a number of pressures
and temptations — pressures and temptations exerted by the vacuums of power
creator! by the Second World War: by the misapplication of a valid belief in the
necessity of creating an international structure in which the United States would
accept her full global responsibilities ; by the grandiose over-extension of Amer-
ica's mission to uplift suffering mankind : by the reformist faith in the American
capacity to instruct and rebuild other nations : by the quite real menace of Stalin-
ist communism: by the counterideology of anti-communism, persisting in rigid
and absolutist form long after the circumstances that had produced it had begun
to change: and by the institutionalization of the Cold War, especially in the in-
creasingly influential military establishment.
The further question arises: did these diverse factors render our involvement
in Vietnam inevitable? Were these forces shaping our policy so powerful that any
administration in Washington would have been compelled to pursue the course
that was, in fact, pursued? My answer to that is no. The Indochina tragedy was,
in my judgment, the consequence of national illusions and delusions, not of na-
tional necessities. The road to disaster had many turnings.
We could, for example, have followed the policy recommended before his death
by President Roosevelt and opposed the restoration of French rule in Indochina.
We could have responded to the appeals of Ho Chi Minh in 1945-4G. Given the
urgencies incited by the Korean War. some measure of American involvement in
supporting the French in the early fifties was probably hard to avoid: nor was
the provision of economic assistance to South Vietnam after 1954 a necessary
cause of subsequent disaster.
I do not regard its Vietnam policy as one of the Kennedy administration's finest
hours. In retrospect, it is clear that we all overreacted to Khruschev's truculent
speech of January 1961. This was the speech predicting the victory of communism
through "wars of national liberation" in the Third World — the speech to which
the Kennedy inaugural was essentially an answer. It would now appear that
Khrushchev was engaged in a complicated maneuver with regard to China : but
Washington, unaware of the depth of the Sino-Soviet split at the time, interpreted
the speech has a challenge to the west. The feeling in Washington then was that
the nuclear stand-off excluded the possibility of nuclear war ; that the western re-
sponse in Korea had reduced the chance of limited war ; and that, if a solution
could only lie found for guerrilla war, a future of peace might be assured. There
thus arose the counterinsurgency mystique— an interesting but dangerous idea and
one which Americans were not qualified by history or temperament to carry
through. At the same time, the shift in military strategy from predominant re-
liance on nuclear weapons to 'flexible response' and the consequent diversification
of our armed forces, though intended to reduce the risk of nuclear war, had the
ironic effect of making possible marginal ventures like Vietnam.
I do not recall, though, any cockiness or relish in the Kennedy White House
about getting involved in Vietnam. There was enough else to do in those years.
Moreover, it must be remembered that President Kennedy's decision to send in
"advisers" at the end of 1901 was in part a trade-off to the national-security
bureaucracy for its sullen acceptance of the Kennedy poliev of neutralizimr
Laos, Kennedy rejected the recommendations of the Taylor-Rostow report for
American armed intervention in 1961. Indeed, less than 100 American were killed
in combat in Vietnam during the entire Kennedy Presidency. On the other hand,
he did acquiesce in 1962 in the definition of the Vietnam problem as primarily
military — a definition which, it should be added, government officials like Averell
Harriman and Roger Hilsman vigorously opposed.
It seems to me fairly fruitless to speculate what would have happened had
President Kennedy lived. It is impossible to predict what dead Presidents woidd
do about situations that take a new form after their death : it is hard enough
to predict, what living Presidents will do about such situations. I suppose the
safest guess as to what John Kennedy's would have been is to look at the line
taken by his brothers after his death. There can be no question that President
Kennedy had the capacity to refuse escalation. He showed that at the time of
the Ray of Pigs and again at the time of the Cuba missile crisis. I know too
that his memory of Vietnam under French rule made him feel there were limits
beyond which one could expand a white military presence without uniting the
energies of local nationalism against the intruder. I find it hard to believe that
Vietnam would have altered his prudent and rational habits in the use of
power. Rut the question of what he would have done had he lived remains
insoluable.
The most disastrous step was the decision in 1965 to send American bombers
to North Vietnam and American combat troops into South Vietnam. Did previous
events leave President Johnson no alternative but to Americanize the Vietnam
war? T do not think that history is so meticulously determined. I believe that
President Johnson genuinely thought — though, in my belief, mistakenly — that
the future of world peace was bound up with American success in Vietnam: in
addition he found it inconceivable that, if American power and technology were
applied, the problem could not be solved. Nor would I underestimate his belief
that failure in Vietnam might lead to a dangerous political backlash in America :
78
his generation had too vivid memory of the campaign against the Truman admin-
istration for having "lost" China. But I do not believe that any other group in
office in Washington at that time would be ineiuctably compelled to do what
the Johnson administration did — any more than another administration in
Washington today would be ineiuctably compelled to the irrational course
recently announced by President Nixon.
Let me deal briefly with the contentions submitted by astute observers that in
some sense the system — that is, our politico-bureaucratic system — "worked" in
the development of American policy in Vietnam. .This contention has been based
(in three propositions.
The first is that we could not afford to lose in Vietnam because of dangerous
repercussions both international and domestic. This was, it seems to me, a gen-
era! mood rather than an absolute point. President Truman thought that not
losing in Vietnam was worth the 40 per cent cost of the war the United States
was paying by 1951. President Eisenhower thought it worth the SO per cent cost
of 1954 plus tlie $200 million per year of military aid from 1955 to 1961. President
Kennedy thought it worth further aid plus the sending of 16,000 advisers. But
T am sure that if these Presidents had anticipated that the eventual cost would
lie 540,000 American troops in Vietnam. $30 billion a year, extensive destruction
and slaughter and then, in the end, military stalemate, they would not have
thought the game to be worth the candle. The question of "not affording to lose'*
is not an absolute question; it is surely relative to the costs of preventing such
loss.
This leads to the second proposition — that our Presidents were never actually
seeking a military victory but always wanted a negotiated settlement. I am
constrained to doubt this. In November 1961, for example, there were 15,000
Viet Cong against 250.000 troops of the Saigon government. It might well have
seemed reasonable — and indeed did seem reasonable — to suppose that ARVN,
stiffened by American weapons and advisers, could deal with this small and
ragged opposition. After all. the Joint Chiefs of Staff told President Kennedy
in the autumn of 1901 that 40.000 American troops could clean up the Viet Cong:
and that, if there were North Vietnamese plus Chinese intervention, 12S.000
more American troops could take care of that.
In 1965, when we began the Americanization of the war, Prescient Johnson,
I am sure, could not conceive that, if we pounded North Vietnam long enough,
there would not be a breaking-point: that, if the greatest power in the world
apnlied itsellf, we could not nail the coonskin to the wall. Up till verv recently,
and perhaps even now, the military have conceived the war to be winnable. in
the sense of assuring the survival of a non-communist regime in Saigon. As for
a negotiated settlement, this was not an issue for the first three Presidents
involved : and the last two have not sought a negotiated settlement except on
terms that would, in effect, assure the survival of the Saigon government —
terms that the other side would be bound as a dusty answer after a generation of
stmcgle.
The third proposition is that our Presidents were not deluded by optimism and
did nor expect military success. This ouestion rook different shapes in different-
administrations. For a good deal of the time, both Presidents Eisenhower and
Kennedy supposed that ARVN could hold its own, and President Johnson cer-
tainly expected success in 1965-66. Mr. Gelb himself has written, "By most con-
ventional standards — the size and firepower of friendly Vietnamese forces, the
number of hamlets pacified, the number of 'free elections' being held, the number
of Communists killed, and so forth — reasonable men could and did think in cau-
tiously optimistic terms." Certainly each President was offered pessimistic advice,
especially by the CIA, but he was also offered plenty of optimistic advice too.
The record shows pessimism and optimism so hopelessly intermingled that any
President could draw almost any conclusions his temperament and intelligence
enjoined him to draw.
In my view the "system" failed dismally. It failed to provide any systematic
and serious assessment of American stakes in Vietnam. It failed in "the political
and military tactics it produced. It failed in its estimate and forecast of the
character of the problem and the magnitude of the difficulty. It failed to foresee
the acute instability of the Diem regime, or the fiasco of the strategic hamlet
program, or the attacks on the Buddhists in 1963, or the futility of the bombing
policy, or the failure of search-and-destroy tactics, or the capacity of the enemy,
year after year, to replenish his losses and enlarge his effort. It was wrong in
79
believing that the South Vietnamese under Diem had the will to defend itself ;
that United States pressure could introduce reform into the rigid minds of Saigon
mandarins ; that, if we pounded long and hard enough, the other side would cry
uncle. It was terribly wrong in regarding Hanoi and Viet Cong as the spearhead
of Chinese aggression. The system could not even foresee developments within the
Saigon regime itself. As the Pentagon study says, "The shifts of loyalties, coups,
rebellions, and major changes of public figures, often caught the Embassy by sur-
prise. It had no effective system, either through overt or covert contacts, for find-
ing out what was going on."
The system, in short, did not offer Presidents intelligent or useful counsel ; and
it reinforced and compounded illusion. In my judgment, the Vietnam adventure
was marked much more by ignorance, misjudgment, muddle and (to be frank)
stupidity than it was by efficiency, foresight, awareness and calculation.
What are the lessons of Vietnam?
(1) That everything in the world is not of equal importance to us. For nearly
a decade we have given too large a share of our attention and resources to a mar-
ginal problem on the mainland of Asia while our position has steadily deteriorated
in parts of the world far more vital to our national security.
(2) That ice cannot do everything in the world. Vietnam should teach us that
in the last half of the 20th century armed white men cannot decide the destiny of
countries in the Third World. Let us hope that it will forever chasten what your
chairman has well termed the "arrogance of power."
(3) That we cannot be the permanent guarantor of stability in a world of tur-
bulence and change. We must reconcile ourselves to an age of local revolution and
local war in which many terrible things will take place that the United States
simply lacks the power to prevent or the wisdom to cure.
(4) That all problems in the ivorld are not military problems, and that military
force is not usually the most effective form of national power. So long as we con-
tinue to define world problems in military terms, so long will we strengthen the
influence of our own military establishment and plunge the nation into further
military intervention. We should undertake military intervention only (a) when
the national security of the United States is directly and indisputably involved ;
(b) when the people whom we thing we are supporting display a capacity for
resistance themselves; and (c) when, in addition, there are reasonable prospects
for success — all conditions rejected and trampled upon by those who made Ameri-
can military policy for Vietnam.
(5) That, if we must fight, toe must rigorously maintain a due and rational
proportion between our means and our cuds. I do not much like the wholesale dis-
tribution of moral judgments in the realm of foreign policy ; but I have no doubt
that the Indochina war became an immoral war when we began to violate the
principle of proportionality, when we began to regard technology as a substitute
for policy, when the means employed and the destruction wrought grew out of any
defensible relationship to the interests involved and the ends sought. We will have
to live with the horror of Vietnam for the rest of our lives.
(G) That foreign policy is not the private property of the executive branch of
government. The President must stop making decisions of war and peace without
effective consultation with the American Congress. He must stop withholding in-
formation about American action and policy essential to wise and informed judg-
ment by the Congress and the electorate. Congress must participate, as in recent
years it has sadly failed to participate, in the control both of foreign policy and
of the government's secrecy system.
Perhaps the lessons of Vietnam can best be summed up in the statement that
President Kennedy made in November 1901 — a statement which, in my belief,
expressed his true views on this matter far more accurately than the grandilo-
quent rhetoric of the inaugural address :
"We must face the fact that the United States is neither omnipotent nor om-
niscient— that we are only six per cent of the world's population — that we can-
not impose our will upon the other ninety-four per cent of mankind — that we
cannot right every wrong or reverse each adversity — and that therefore there
cannot be an American solution to every world problem."
The Chairman. Thank you, Dr. Schlesin£er. That is a very percep-
tive and a very interesting statement. We will return to questions on
it when we hear from Dr. Chomsky.
Dr. Chomskv. would you like to o-ive us your statement at this ti]
80
STATEMENT OF NOAM CHOMSKY, FERRARI P. WAED PROFESSOR
OF LINGUISTICS, MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
Mr. Chomsky. Well, my statement is also much too long to read,
I am afraid, and I will just therefore mention a few of the main
points and, if I may, I would also like to comment on some of the events
that have taken place since I submitted this statement last week,
which I think are very ominous and relate to a number of the points
that I made in the statement.
U.S. POLICY OF IMPOSING NON-COM*MUNIST REGIME ON VIETNAM
In September 1048, the State Department issued a policy statement
in which it defined a dilemma that faced U.S. policymakers. The U.S.
long-term objective was to eliminate Communist influence in Indo-
china to the maximum extent possible and bring Indochina within the
western orbit. But the statement reported that the Communists had
captured control of the nationalist movement, that Ho Chi Minh was
the strongest and perhaps the ablest figure in Indochina, and that any
suggested solution which excludes him is an expedient of uncertain
outcome. Hence a dilemma.
The Chairman. Was that 1948 ?
Mr. Chomsky. September 1948. It was in this context that Dean
Acheson on May 10, 1949, cabled to American officials in Saigon and
Paris that "no effort should be spared" to assure the success of the
Bao Dai government, since there appeared to be "no other alternative
to establishment Commie pattern Vietnam."
He further urged that this government should be "truly representa-
tive even to extent including outstanding non-Commie leaders now
supporting Ho." In other words, he had formulated what has ever
since been the American policy of imposing a non-Communist regime
on Vietnam — later South Vietnam.
He also said in May 1949, that the United States should recognize
the French-imposed government as soon as circumstances permit.
This dilemma has always remained. The United States has been
committed to a non-Communist Vietnam, by about 1960 a non-Commu-
nist South Vietnam, but the western imposed regimes were never able
to compete politically with the Viet Minh and then with the NLF.
VIET CONG CAPTURED NATIONALIST MOVEMENT
Leslie Gelb summarizes the situation at the very end of the period
covered in the Pentagon Papers in almost the same words as those of
the State Department policy statement of 1948. He says that the Viet
Con <r have captured the nationalist movement and that the government
of Vietnam is in effect a government of French collaborators, which
isouite accurate.
One can take national intelligence estimates from the French period,
for example. 19r>.°>. and interchange them with only a few changes of
names with the rather despairing report of American pacification
experts on. say. December 31. 1967. I give references in my statement.
81
STRATEGY OF ANNIHILATION UNDERTAKEN BY U.S. FORCES
There are a number of consequences to this dilemma. The first con-
sequence is the strategy of annihilation that was undertaken by U.S.
forces, in a sense, out of military necessity — that is, there was no other
way to eliminate a powerful political force.
It is important to bear in mind that the main thrust of the American
military effort has always been against South Vietnam, specifically
against the rural society of South Vietnam. Were we capable of apply-
ing to ourselves the standards we rightly apply to others, we would
say the United States has been at war with South Vietnam, in effect.
It was necessary to destroy the society, the rural society, in which the
Communist-led revolution was rooted.
It was necessary, as pacification adviser Robert Komer once said,
to "grind the enemy down by sheer weight and mass," bearing in mind
that the enemy was in effect the rural population of South Vietnam.
This dilemma is the root cause of those military measures that have
caused such revulsion in the United States and abroad — the crop de-
struction; the deliberate refugee generation, as suggested by Mr.
Komer; the Phoenix program; the destruction of villages; the whole
panoply of horrors that you are all familiar with.
This political weakness of the American-imposed regime was always
quite clearly understood by experts in and out of governments. Ber-
nard Fall pointed out about 10 years ago that —
It takes all the technical proficiency our system can provide to make up for
the woeful lack of popular support and political savvy of most of the regimes that
the West has thus far sought to prop up.
The Americans, he said, are now coming to appreciate this in South
Vietnam.
Perhaps a more interesting example is an internal memorandum by
John Paul Vann who was Field Operations Coordinator of the U.S.
Operations Mission at the time and has been for many years a chief
American adviser in so-called "pacification."
GOVERNMENT OF VIETNAM HAS NO POPULAR POLITICAL BASE
In.this 1965 memorandum Vann states that the government of Viet-
nam has no popular political base, that it is oriented toward the ex-
ploitation of the rural and lower class urban population, that it is in
effect a continuation of the French colonial system, that there is a
social revolution underway largely identified with the National
Liberation Front. And he went on to speak approvingly of this social
revolution. From these observations, which I believe were quite accu-
rate, he drew the conclusion that the U.S. must take over and impose
a non-Communist regime.
One could add many other sources in and out of the Pentagon
Papers. Time being short, I will not.
The fact of the matter is, the "Government of Vietnam" was never
able to compete politically. It always recognized this; American ad-
visers always understood this. If we look at its composition we can
see why it cannot compete politically today. Thieu. Ky and Khiem.
82
like most of the AKVN top command, served with the French in the
battle against the independence of their own country. This is in effect
a Quisling regime; it is a re-rime of the wealthy and the corrupt; no
one will fight for it. The ARVN collapse last week is a good example.
U.S. OPPOSITION" TO POLITICAL, SETTLEMENT
A further consequence of the dilemma noted in 194-8 is that the
United Stntes has always opposed a political settlement in South
Vietnam, or in Vietnam altogether.
The Communist strategy, as clearly specified in the Pentagon Papers
record bv American intelligence and many others, has always been in
South Vietnam a strategy of neutralism, a coalition regime with Com-
munist participation in which they felt quite confident they could
come out on top — perhaps correctly. The U.S. has always regarded this
as a trap, just as the State Department in 1961 described the all Viet-
nam elections provision of the Geneva Accords as a "well-laid trap"
that the U.S. -backed regime was able to evade.
Communist participation, it was always assumed, would lead to a
Communist takeover. The reason, often unspoken, sometimes said ex-
plicitly, is, of course, the political strength of the National Liberation
Front as opposed to the western-imposed regimes.
Just today. May 10, 1 notice in the newspapers that Henry Kissinger,
with characteristic clarity, has made in effect exactly the same point
in a news conference yesterday. He said, according to the correspond-
ent's report, that the formation of what in effect, if not name, would
be a coalition government in Saigon was proposed by the other side,
then following it, a ceasefire, then negotiations to give a final political
solution, with the Provisional Revolutionary Government.
Quoting Mr. Kissinger :
"That is what we have rejected. That is what we call the imposition, und^r
the thinnest veneer of a Communist government . . . That is the only issue on
which negotiations have broken down.
Assuming the quotes to be accurate, this is simply a very clear and
explicit statement of the refusal of political accommodation which
has always been a main feature of American policy, for perfectly
obvious reasons.
In November, 1964, Ambassador Maxwoll Tovlor argued that even
if we could establish an effective regime in Saigon, to attain Amer-
ican objectives, it would not suffice to "drive the DRV (Democratic
Republic of Vietnam) out of its reinforcing role." Rather, he said,
we will not succeed unless we also "obtain its cooperation in bringing
an end to the Viet Cong insurgenev." We must, he said, "persuade
or force the DRV to stor> its aid to the Viet Cong and to use its direc-
tive powers to make the Viet Conar desist . . ."
If wo replace the phrase "DRV" by the phrase "USSR" in that
statement, you have in effect the Nixon-Kissinger diplomacy of today.
PARALLEL BETWEEN 10 0 5 AND 10 72
In 1965 the indigenous National Liberation Front had won; there-
fore, the United States shifted to a larger Avar. It undertook the
bombing of all the Vietnam, primarily South Vietnam. It invaded
83
South Vietnam to destroy the forces of the National Liberation Front.
Its effort, according to Ambassador Taylor and many others, was to
try to force the DRV to make the Viet Cong desist. Instead, as we
know, we drew the DRV into the war. Well, that was 1865.
In 1972 there was a remarkable parallel. Again, the enemy, in this
case — after the 7 years of American invasion — the DRV and the
PRG, the "enemy," has apparently won once again and Nixon is again
shifting to a still broader, global confrontation in which lie hopes
to prevail. He wants the U.S.S.R. to stop supporting the DRV and
the PRG, to cooperate with him to impose certain constraints on the
DRV, as Mr. Kissinger suggested yesterday, to permit him in short
to achieve his objective of a non-Communist South Vietnam, the U.S.
objective since the 1940's; and it appears that he is willing to risk
nuclear war to achieve this goal.
Whether the U.S.S.R. and China will cooperate or whether they
will respond as the DRV did in 1965, I. of course, cannot predict.
Nor can one predict whether another U.S. Administration will in-
tensify the destruction of Indochina within the context of a widened,
heightened confrontation, as was the case in 1965.
CONSEQUENCES OF POLITICAL, WEAKNESS OF U.S. POSITION IN VIETNAM
The treat of nuclear war has always been inherent in the logic of
the American position m Vietnam. The political weakness of the Amer-
ican-imposed regimes forced us continually to widen and intensify
the conflict with risks that were always appreciated.
To give a few examples, on November 8, 1964, in the midst of the
planning for the escalation of the following February, a NSC (Na-
tional Security Council) working group concluded that the commit-
ment to maintain a non-Communist South Vietnam would involve
high risk of a major conflict in Asia, almost inevitably leading to a
Korea-scale ground action and possibly the use by the United States
of nuclear weapons.
About a year later, December 1965, the intelligence community es-
timated at almost 50-50 the probability that China would intervene
if the war was significantly escalated. It recommended bombing esca-
lation, with the exception of State's INR. The intervention of China
was always understood as the trigger for nuclear war. Of course,
I don't know what is happening now but I would suppose that intel-
ligence is estimating the risk of nuclear Avar today as being substan-
tial, exactly as it did during the missile crisis of 1962 where the risks
of nuclear war, according to reports by Theodore Sorensen and others,
were estimated as being a third to a half.
Even if the present situation stabilizes short of an international
war, we will be driven to the same confrontation again and again. Dean
Acheson pointed out }^ears ago, in 1950, that the French must overcome
the opposition of the indigenous population. Little has changed since
then, apart from the level of destruction and the danger of great po\\ er
conflict.
There are further consequences of the political weakness of the U.S.
position in Vietnam. One is the long and depressing record of deceit.
Dean Acheson was forced to try to present the Viet Minn as aggres-
sors, as agents of an international conspiracy, and to claim that the
84
French and the Bao Dai regime were defending the territorial integ-
rity of Indochina. . . .
In one form or another, we have been hearing the same kind ot
story ever since. I need not review the sorry record. Some details are
in my statement, including examples of what I take to be some very
serious misrepresentations before this committee with regard to DRV
troops in South Vietnam. .
A further consequence of the weakness of the American political
position has been the contempt for American legal obligations and,
again, I give a series of examples through the 1950's and 1960's in my
statement and I will omit them in the interest of time.
POSITIONS IN DEBATE OVER WAR
To a large extent, the debate over the war counterposes the opti-
mists, who believe that with persistence we can win, to the pessimists,
who argue that the U.S. cannot, at reasonable cost, guarantee the rule
of the regime of its choice in South Vietnam. This opposition between
the optimists and the pessimists appears as well in the first of the
Nixon-Kissinger papers released by the Washington Post a few days
a iro. The optimists felt that we could win in 8.3 years from early 1968 ;
and the pessimists felt that it would take, I believe, 13.4 years to beat
the Vietnamese into submission.
There is a third position which, unfortunately, is barely represented
in policy making so far as the documentary record indicates, namely,
that the U.S. executive should abide by the supreme law of the land
and refrain from forceful intervention in the internal affairs of others.
OBLIGATIONS OF U.S. UNDER U.N. CHARTER
It appears that successive administrations believed that Vietnam was
the victim of a Kremlin-directed conspiracy in 1949 and 1950, that
there was aggression from the north a decade later, and so on. They
had the legal authority to express these beliefs and to appeal to the
Security Council of the U.N. to determine the existence of a threat to
peace. That they did not do so is self-explanatory. Internal documents
now make it evident they never intended to live up to the obligations
of the U.S. under the U.N. charter.
The U.S. executive had no authority to back French colonialism,
to impose a terroristic regime, or even a benevolent democracy, on the
South Vietnamese, to engage in clandestine war throughout Indo-
china, or to carry out a fullscale invasion of South Vietnam in 1965,
demolishing the peasant society, or to wipe out the Plain of Jars and
much of rural Cambodia under President Nixon, or to bomb Hai-
phong, or to carry out any of the other actions that have led to mass
revulsion in this country and throughout much of the world.
Had the U.S. executive been strictly bound by its legal obligations,
which, in my opinion, do express reasonable principles of international
behavior, we would never have found ourselves in the Indochina war.
U.S. PURSUIT OP PERCEIVED SELF-INTEREST
Well, I would like to make a few comments on the question of why
the U.S. became so deeply engaged in this war, particularly in the
earlier period.
85
I think that by 1965, as John McNaughton once said at that time,
the question becomes academic ; we were there. Period. We had to win.
But in the early period the documentary record now available in the
Pentagon papers, particularly books 8 through 10 of the Government
edition of the Pentagon papers, presents a fairly explicit, rather de-
tailed account of rational, if cynical, pursuit of perceived self-interest.
The straight forward major argument, continually reiterated, is that
the United States has strategic and economic interests in Southeast
Asia that must be secured ; holding Indochina is essential for securing
these interests ; therefore, we must hold Indochina.
A critical consideration throughout — this, incidentally, runs
throughout the midsixties — was Japan, which will eventually accom-
modate to the "Soviet bloc" if Southeast Asia is lost.
In effect, then, the United States would have lost the Pacific phase
of World War II, which was fought, in part, to prevent Japan from
constructing a closed "co-prosperity sphere" in Asia from which the
United States would be excluded. The theoretical framework for these
considerations was the so-called domino theory which was formulated
quite clearly before the Korean war, as was the decision to support
French colonialism.
DOMINO THEORY AND "IDEOLOGICAL EXPANSION"
It is fashionable today to deride the domino theory, but in fact it
contains an important kernel of plausibility, perhaps truth. National
independence and revolutionary social change, if successful, may very
well be contagious. The danger is what Walt Rostow, writing in 1955,
called the "ideological threat," specifically, "the possibility that the
Chinese Communists can prove to Asians by progress in China that
the Communist methods are better and faster than democratic meth-
ods"— An American Policy in Asia, page 7.
Similar fears were expressed by the State Department and the Joint
Chiefs of Staff in 1959 — Government edition of the Pentagon papers,
X, 1198, 1213, 1226. State therefore urged that the United States do
what it can to retard the economic progress of the Communist Asian
states, a decision which, I believe, is quite remarkable in its cruelty.
A similar concern for Chinese "ideological expansion" was expressed
in the planning for escalation in the fall of 1961. Fear was expressed
that the rot would spread over mainland Southeast Asia, and that
Thailand — always "the second line of defense" ever since the deep
American involvement there starting in 1918 — that it would accom-
modate to Communist China "even without any marked military move
by Communist China." The "rot" in these cases is surely the ideologi-
cal threat. It was, I assume, not expected that Ho Chi Minh would sail
to Indonesia, let alone Hawaii. Recall that in this period there was
much talk of a competition between the Chinese and the Indian models
of development. In this context, fear of Chinese "ideological expan-
sion" gave substance to the domino theory, quite apart from any spec-
ulation about Chinese aggression or about Kremlin-directed conspira-
cies carried out by the Viet Minh. as expressed in the National Security
Council statements and elsewhere in the late forties.
It is interesting that the domino theory was never seriously chal-
lenged in the available record, though its more fantastic formulations
were discounted. Rather, there was debate about timing and probabil-
86
ity. The reason, I take it, is that stripped of fantasies, the doctrine was
not implausible. Successful social and economic development in a uni-
fied Vietnam, Communist-led on the Chinese model, might well have
posed a "threat" to other developing countries, in that peasant-based
revolutionary movements within them might have been led to follow
this model instead of relying on the industrial powers and adapting
their pattern of development to the needs and interests of the indus-
trial powers. This might very well have led to Japanese moves to
accommodate in some fashion to the closed societies of East Asia, with
a possible impact on India, ultimately even the Middle East, as the
domino theory postulated : not by invasion, which was most unlikely,
but by "ideological expansion," which was not so improbable.
VIETNAM TEST CASE IN KENNEDY PERIOD
In the Kennedy period, Vietnam was elevated to the status of a test
case and, I think it is fair to say, a degree of hysteria was introduced
into planning. But, nevertheless, the rational core of policymaking re-
mained. Developing nations must be taught a lesson : they must ob-
serve the rules and not undertake national liberation on the do-it-your-
self Chinese model, with mass mobilization of the population and a
focus on internal needs and resources.
U.S. INTERPRETATION OF U.S. MOTIVES
The documentation for the pre-Kennedy period, I think, gives very
substantial support to this U.S. interpretation of U.S. motives. I will
cite one case : NSC 48/1, December, 1949. It warned that Southeast
Asia "is the target of a coordinated offensive directed by the Kremlin"
this is stated, is now clear. (We know from other records in the Penta-
gon Papers that they couldn't produce a particle of evidence for it.)
The industrial plant of Japan and such strategic materials as Indo-
nesian oil must be denied to the "Stalinist bloc," which might other-
wise attain global dominance ; they must be kept in the western orbit.
Japan is the crucial prize in East Asia. Communist pressure on Japan
will mount, because of proximity, the indigenous Japanese Communist
movement which might be able to exploit cultural factors and
economic hardship, and "the potential of Communist China as a source
of raw materials vital to Japan and a market for its goods." Japan re-
quires Asian food, raw materials, and markets; the United States
should encourage "a considerable increase in southern Asiastic food
and raw material exports" to avoid "preponderant dependence on
Chinese sources." Analogous considerations hold of India. Further-
more these markets and sources of raw materials should be developed
for U.S. purposes. "Some kind of regional association . . . among the
non-Communisl countries of Asia might become an important means
of developing a favorable atmosphere for such trade among ourselves
and with other parts of the world."
The general lines of this analysis persist in the following years. As
John F. Kennedy once said in 1956, Vietnam is "the keystone to the
arch, the finger in the dike," terminology quite characteristic of that
period. Tic also spoke of the political liberty of South Vietnam which
was such an inspiration to other peoples in Asia and other peoples of
the world, also in terms characteristic of that period.
87
DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN TWO KINDS OF ANTI-COMMUNISM
It is often argued that U.S. intervention was motivated by blind
anti-Communism and other errors. It is necessary, however, to dis-
tinguish between two kinds of "anti-Communism."
Opposition to indigenous movements in Asia that might pursue the
Chinese model of development — this cannot properly be called blind
anti-Communism; rather, it is quite rational imperialism which seeks
to prevent any nibbling away at areas that provide the western indus-
trial powers and Japan with free access to markets, raw materials, a
cheap labor force, the possibility for export of pollution and oppor-
tunities for investment.
From the late forties these were very explicit understandings and
policies in National Security Council and other analyses and they re-
main so throughout.
On the other hand, say, as in NSC 48/1 of 1949, the reference to a
coordinated offensive directed by the Kremlin against Southeast Asia,
with the Viet Minh as its agent, is indeed blind anti-Communism ; that
is to say, pure ideology beyond the reach of evidence but extremely
useful as a propaganda device to rally domestic support for military
intervention against indigenous Communist-led movements. The Rus-
sians behave no differently when they invade Czechoslovakia. They
state — for all I know even believe — that they are doing so to protect
the Czech people from the machinations of Wall Street, the CIA, and
the "West German aggressors. In fact, they are seeking to preserve the
Russian empire from erosion from within.
The record makes clear that the United States did not enter the In-
dochina war because it had discovered the Viet Minh to be Russian or
Chinese agents. Nor did it repeatedly escalate this war because it found
that the NLF was a puppet of the North — China, or Moscow. Quite the
opposite was true. First came the intervention, for entirely different
reasons, and then the effort to establish the dependence and control
that was required for propaganda purposes and also, I presume, for
the self-image of the policymakers.
It is, after all, psychologically much easier to destroy agents of Chi-
nese aggression than those who had captured the nationalist movement
of Vietnam.
One form of anti-Communism motivated U.S. intervention : namely,
opposition to indigenous Communist-led movements, under the as-
sumptions of the domino theory.
A second form of anti-Communism was invoked to justify the in-
tervention, publicly and internally: fear of a Kremlin-directed con-
spiracy or Chinese aggression — as far as we know, the figment of imag-
ination.
Much the same has been true elsewhere : for example, in Greece in
the midforties and in the Caribbean, repeatedly.
FAILURE TO RELATE VIETNAM POLICY TO DEVELOPMENTS ELSEWHERE
A serious defect of the Pentagon study, inherent in Secretary Mc-
Namara's guidelines, is its failure to relate U.S. policy in Vietnam to
developments elsewhere, even in Southeast Asia. Had the historians
been able to spread a somewhat wider net, they would have discovered,
88
for example, that the domino theory was expressed by Secretary of
State Marshall with regard to Greece in 1947; in this case, the Middle
Eastern countries, not Japan and Indonesia, were the farther dominoes
that concerned him. They would also have discovered intriguing simi-
larities between U.S. intervention in Indochina and in Korea from
1945-1950. They might have noted that the U.S. escalation of clandes-
tine activities in Vietnam and Laos in late 1963 and 1964 apparently
coincided with a similar escalation of attacks on Cambodia by the
Khmer Serei, trained and equipped by the U.S. Special Forces and
the CIA.
They would have observed that from 1948 the United States was
deeply involved in Thai affairs, supporting a corrupt and at times sav-
age military dictatorship, at first under a Japanese collaborator.
They would have determined, in short, that the United States has
not been a confused victim of events, but an active agent, pursuing
policies that fell within a rather coherent global strategy: to carve
out and stabilize a system of open societies, societies in which, in
particular, U.S. capital can operate more or less freely. Though this
is far from the sole operative factor in U.S. policy, still it is surely
the beginning of wisdom to recognize its crucial role.
LESSON OF PENTAGON HISTORY
At one crucial point in the planning to escalate the war in 1964,
William Bundy raised the question whether it would be possible to
carry out the preferred escalatory option "under the klieg lights of a
democracy." I think he is quite right to raise this question, though
not exactly for the reasons he gave. Secrecy and deceit are essential
components of aggression. The visibility of the American war of an-
nihilation in South Vietnam was undobtedly a factor in turning much
of the population to protest and resistance, much to the credit of Amer-
ican society. The social costs of empire, in a healthy democracy, would
impede imperial planners. But a system of centralized power, in-
sulated from public scrutiny and operating in secret, possessing vast
means of destruction and hampered by few constraints will naturally
tend to commit aggression and atrocities. That is the primary lesson
of the Pentagon history, to my mind, although I think we hardly need
this valuable and illuminating record to establish the fact.
What is worse, I think very little has changed. Even many opponents
of the war pretend to themselves that others are to blame for the catas-
trophe of Vietnam. In a strong editorial statement against the war,
the New York Times last Sunday states :
This is not to say that Americans, including the political and military com-
mands and the GI's themselves, did not originally conceive their role quite
honestly as that of liherators and allies in the cause of freedom : hut such ideal-
istic motives had little chance to prevail against local leaders skilled in the art
of manipulating their foreign protectors. May 7, 1972.
Once again we have the image of the American political leadership,
noble and virtuous, bewildered and victimized, but not responsible,
never responsible for what it has done. The corruption of the intellect
and the moral cowardice revealed by such statements defy comment.
Whether the U.S. will withdraw from Vietnam short of true geno-
cide and perhaps even the serious threat of international war is, I am
89
afraid, an open question. There is, unfortunately, sufficient reason to
suppose that the same grim story will be reenacted elsewhere.
(Dr. Chomsky's prepared statement follows:)
Prepared Statement of Noam Chomsky on the Origins of the Vietnam War
Reviewing the record of American intervention in Indochina, one cannot fail
to be .struck by the continuity of basic assumptions through successive admin-
istrations. Never has there been the slightest deviation from the principle that a
non-Communist regime must be imposed and defended, regardless of popular
sentiment. The scope of the principle was narrowed when it was conceded, by
about I960, that North Vietnam was irretrievably "lost". Otherwise, the prin-
ciple has been maintained without equivocation. Given this principle, the strength
of the Vietnamese resistance, the military power available to the United States
and the lack of effective constraints, one can deduce with precision the strategy
of annihilation that was gradually undertaken.
On May 10, 1949 Dean Acheson informed U.S. officials in Saigon and Paris that
"no effffort [should] be spared" to assure the success of the Bao Dai government,
since there appeared to be "no other alternative to establishment] Commie
pattern Vietnam". He further urged that this government should be "truly
representative even to extent including outstanding non-Commie leaders now
supporting Ho". A State Department policy statement of the preceding Sep-
tember had noted that the Communists under Ho Chi Minh had "captur[ed]
control of the nationalist movement", thus impeding the "long-term objective"
of the United States, "to eliminate so far as possible Communist influence in
Indochina". We are unable to suggest any practicable solution to the French, the
report continued, "as we are all too well aware of the unpleasant fact that Com-
munist Ho Chi Minh is the strongest and perhaps the ablest figure in Indochina
and that any suggested solution which excludes him is an expedient of uncertain
outcome." But to Acheson, Ho's popularity and ability were of no greater moment
than his nationalist credentials : "Question whether Ho as much nationalist as
Commie is irrelevant."
In May 1907, John McNaughton presented a memorandum which the Pentagon
historian takes to imply a significant modification of policy towards a more lim-
ited and conciliatory stance. The Saigon government, he urged, should be moved
"to reach an accommodation with the non-Communist South Vietnamese who are
under the VC banner ; to accept them as members of an opposition political party,
and, if necessary, to accept their individual participation in the national gov-
ernment . . ." (Gravel Edition, Pentagon Papers, vol. IV, p. 489). Exactly Ache-
son's proposal of 18 years earlier, restricted now to South Vietnam.
In a summary of the situation after the Tet offensive of 1968, the director of
the Pentagon Study asks whether the U.S. can "overcome the apparent fact that
the Viet Cong have 'captured' the Vietnamese nationalist movement while the
GVN has become the refuge of Vietnamese who were allied with the French in the
battle against the independence of their nation?" (ii, 414). His question expressed
the dilemma of the State Department 20 years before, and properly so. The bi-
ographies of Thieu, Ky and Khiem indicate the continuity of policy ; all served
with the French forces, as did most of the top ARVN officers. "Studies of peas-
ant attitudes conducted in recent years have demonstrated that for many, the
struggle which began in 1945 against colonialism continued uninterrupted through-
out Dieni's regime : in 1954, the foes of nationalists were transformed from France
and Bao Dai, to Diem and the U.S. . . . but the issues at stake never changed"
(I, 295). Correspondingly, the Pentagon considered its problem to be to "deter
the Viet Cong (formerly called Viet Minh)"— May, 1959. The Thieu regime today
has a power base remarkably like Diem's, and substantial segments of the urban
intelligentsia — "the people who count," as Ambassador Lodge once put it (II,
738) — now speak out against U.S. intervention.
An NIE of June, 1953 discussed the gloomy prospects for the "Vietnamese
government" given "the failure of Vietnamese to rally to [it]", the fact that the
population assist the Viet Minh more than the French, the inability of "the
Vietnam leadership" to mobilize popular energy and resources, and so on (I,
391f). With hardly more than a change of names, this analysis might be inter-
changed with the despairing report from MACCORDS on December 31, 1967,
deploring the corruption of the GVN, the ever-widening gap between the people
and the GVN, and its growing weakness. With these words, the record of U.S.-
GVN relations ends (II, 406-7).
90
One may, perhaps, argue that the popular inood counts for less than in earlier
years, now that the U.S. has succeeded, partially at least, in "grinding the enemy
down by sheer weight and mass' (Robert Komer ; II, 5V5), and nuw that North
\ ietnamese forces have increasingly been drawn into the war, as a direct and
always anticipated consequence of American escalation, so that the American
war against tne rural society of South Vietnam now increasingly takes on some-
thing of the aspect of a regional conflict, as had been alleged in Administra-
tion propaganda — quite falsely — many years earlier.
The President states that "The Communists have failed in their efforts to win
over the people of South Vietnam politically" (April 26, 1972). That is quite
true. He did not add, however, that these efforts were blocked by American
force. Because the Communists appeared capable of gaining a political victory,
the Diem regime could not tolerate democratic structures in 1954 (as Joseph
Buttinger, for one, has pointed out) and was forced to resort to violence and
repression ; U.S. troops were introduced in support of combat operations in the
early 1960's; further escalation was planned in 1964; the U.S. sought to avoid
"premature negotiations" until the enemy had been destroyed by force; all of
Vietnam was subjected to massive bombardment, and the South, to a direct
American invasion, in early 1965. The programs of deliberate refugee genera-
tion (as advocated explicitly by Robert Komer; IV, 441), the destruction of the
rural society, the Phoenix program of assassination and terror — all were under-
taken to overcome the "clear and growing lack of legitimacy of the GVN", a
constant refrain in the documentary record, and to prevent a Communist polit-
ical victory. The refusal to accept a political accommodation in the South today
derives from the same consideration. It must be emphasized that this is the cen-
tral issue standing in the way of a negotiated settlement, as it has been
throughout.
On January 6, 1965 William Bundy wrote that "the situation in Vietnam is
now likely to come apart more rapidly than we had anticipated in November . . .
the most likely form of coming apart would be a government of key groups
starting to negotiate covertly with the Liberation front or Hanoi," soon asking
"that we get out". The preceding August, Ambassador Taylor had explained
Communist strategy : "to seek a political settlement favorable to the Commu-
nists", passing through neutralism to "the technique of a coalition government"
(III, 531). Intelligence concurred, estimating that "it was the Communist in-
tention to seek victory through a 'neutralist coalition' rather than by force of
arms" (III, 207; analyst). The President, in March, 1964, had warned Ambassa-
dor Lodge to "knock . . . down the idea of neutralization wherever it rears its
ugly head". Neutralism, as Ambassador Taylor noted, "appeared to mean throw-
ing the internal political situation open and thus inviting Communist participa-
tion" (III, 675), for obvious reasons an intolerable prospect.
The dilemma noted in 1948 was never resolved. The political weakness of the
U.S. -imposed regimes — Quisling regimes, in effect — forced the U.S. to take over
the war and ultimately to devastate the rural society. On occasion, it was difficult
even to obtain formal GVN authorization for U.S. escalation. At one crucial
moment, the new program of escalation of February, 1965 was received "with
enthusiasm" by Ambassador Taylor, who then "explained the difficulties he faced
in obtaining authentic GVN concurrence 'in the condition of virtual non-govern-
ment' which existed in Saigon at that moment" (III, 323).
The problem was always understood by experts on the scene. John Paul Vann,
USOM Field Operations Coordinator, circulated a report in 1965 based on the
premise that a social revolution was in process in South Vietnam "primarily
identified with the National Liberation Front" and that "a popular political
base for the Government of South Vietnam does not now exist". The U.S. must
therefore take over. In the early 1960's Bernard Fall wrote :
Why is it that we must use top-notch elite forces, the cream of the crop of
American, British, French, or Australian commando and special warfare schools;
armed with the very best that advanced technology can provide ; to defeat Viet-
Minh Algerians, or Malady "CT's" [Chinese terrorists], almost none of whom can
lay claim to similar expert training and only in the rarest of cases to equality in
firepower?
The answer is very simple : It takes all the technical proficiency our system
can provide to make up for the woeful lack of popular support and political savvy
of most of the regimes that the West has thus far sought to prop up. The Ameri-
91
cans who are now fighting in South Viet-Nam have come to appreciate this fact
out of first-hand experience. (Street Without Joy, 1964, p. 372.)
A decade later, the same analysis holds. There is every reason to suppose that
it will continue to apply in the future, and not only in Southeast Asia.
The major premise of the American intervention has always been that we
must "build a nation" in the South to counter the Communist Vietnamese, who
seemed to be alone in their ability to mobilize the population. The enemy has
found "a dangerously clever strategy for licking the United States", the director
of Systems Analysis warned. "Unless we recognize and counter it now, that
strategy may become all too popular in the future" (IV, 466). The strategy was
to wage a war of national liberation based on the aspirations of the Vietnamese
peasants for independence and social justice.
The outside power was never able to compete. The U.S. could maim and kill,
drive peasants from their homes, destroy the countryside and organized social
life, but not "build a nation" in the approved image. We had taken on a society
that was simply not fit for domination. Therefore, it had to be destroyed. This
was worse than a crime, it was a blunder, as the realistic experts now soberly
explain.
American ambassadors proposed that the U.S. should influence the GVN to
adopt a program "to give the new government an idealistic appeal or philosophy
which will compete with that declared by the VC" (Bunker, August, 1967; II,
403), or to "Saturate the minds of the people with some socially conscious and
attractive ideology, which is susceptible of being carried out" (Lodge; mid-1964,
II, 530). Somehow, these concepts never succeeded in overcoming the "idealistic
appeal" of the NLF in rural Vienam.
Failing to saturate the minds of the people with a sufficiently attractive ideol-
ogy, the Administration turned to the easier task of saturating the country with
troops and bombs and defoliants. A State Department paper observed that "Sat-
uration bombing by artillery and airstrikes ... is an accepted tactic, and there is
probably no province where this tactic has not been widely employed" (end of
1966; IV, 398). The only objection raised is that it might be more profitable to
place greater emphasis on winning support for the Saigon regime. That U.S. force
should he devoted to winning support for its creation, the Saigon regime, ap-
parently seemed no more strange to the author of this statement than that the
U.S. should be conducting saturation bombing of all provinces in South Vietnam.
The main thrust of the American war has been against the population of South
Vietnam, from the early 1960's, and with a vast increase in 196.") when a virtual
occupying army was deployed and the "basic strategy of punitive bombing" was
initiated in the South (Westmoreland, March, 1965; III. 404). It is revealing to
investigate the decision to undertake the massive air attack on South Vietnam.
"It takes time to ?nake hard decisions" MeNaughton wrote: "It took us almost
a year to make the decision to bomb North Vietnam" (IV, 48). The decision is
studied in painstaking detail. Little is said, however, about the decision to bomb
South Vietnam at more than triple the intensity by 1966. This was the fundamen-
tal policy decision of early 1905. As Bernard Fall pointed out not long after,
"what, changed the character of the Vietnam war was not the decision to bomb
North Vietnam; not the decision to use American ground troops in south Viet-
nam ; but the decision to wage unlimited aerial warfare inside the country at
the price of literally pounding the place to bits". But of this decision, we learn
very little in the Pentagon history, and only a few scattered remarks indicate
the effects of the bombing.
The contrast between the attention given to the bombing of the North and
the far more destructive bombing in South Vietnam is still more remarkable in
the light of the fact that South Vietnam, from early 1905, was subjected not only
to unprecedented aerial attack but also to artillery bombardment which may
well have been even more destructive. In January, 1966 Secretary McNamara in-
troduced into Congressional testimony parts of a "Motivation and Morale study",
still otherwise secret, which indicated that artillery bombardment may be even
more effective than air attack in causing villagers "to move where they will be
safe from such attacks", 'regardless of their attitude to the GVN" ( Sen:; to Armed
Services and Appropriations Committee Hearings, January, 1960). The study wns
optimistic, concluding that such methods would help dry up the popular sea in
which the guerillas swim. In later years, Westmoreland and others were to
point to the denial of recruits from populated areas in the South as the cause for
infiltration of regular North Vietnamese troops, first confirmed on a small scale in
late April, 1965.
S3-605— 73 7
92
The reason why the bombing of the North was given such meticulous atten-
tion while the far greater attack on the South was undertaken as a matter of
course, seems clear enough. The bombing of North Vietnam was highly visible,
very costly to the United States and extremely dangerous, with a constant and
perceived threat of general war. The far more savage attack on the South was
merelv destroying the rural society, and therefore— so the documentary record
indicates— did not merit the attention of the planners in Washington.
The moral level of planning is strikingly revealed by this contrast. It is further
illustrated on the rare occasions when some qualms are expressed about the
bombing. When B-52 bombing began in mid-1965, William Bundy noted one and
only one problem : "we look silly and arouse criticism if these [B-52 raids] do not
show significant results" (IV, 612). If the B-52 raids do show significant results,
we may turn out to be mass murderers, since in the nature of the case, there can
be at best partial information about the targets of these weapons of mass terror
and destruction ; but that appears to be no problem at all. Within a few months,
B-52 raids were reported by Bernard Fall and others in the populous Mekong
Delta, with devastating effects on the civilian society, a pattern repeated else-
where in South Vietnam, and recently, in the North as well.
There is, to my knowledge, no record of any hesitation about the use of any
military tactic except on grounds of the potential cost to the decisionmakers and
the interests thev renresent.
The concern for law is fully comparable. The supreme law of the land clearly
prohibits the threat or use of* force in international affairs, except in the case of
collective self-defense against armed attack. The record shows plainly that that
American use of force against the population of South Vietnam always preceded
anything attributable to the DRV and was always vastly greater in scale— putting
aside the question whether the DRV was entitled to come to the aid of the South-
ern NLF after the dismantling of the Geneva Accords by the U.S. and the regime
it instituted in the South, after the extensive use of terror by this regime, which
far exceeded the subsequent counter-violence of the indigenous resistance.
In fact, the Administration never regarded itself as bound by the law. To cite
one case, immediately after the Geneva Agreements, the NSC adopted NSC 5429/2
(August 20, 1954) , which recommended covert operations and other pressures and
preparation for direct use of U.S. military force in the event of "local Communist
subversion or rebellion not constituting armed attack" (my emphasis), including
use of U.S. military force "against the external source of such subversion or re-
bellion (including Communist China if determined to be the source)". The recom-
mendation that force be used in the absence of armed attack is in clear and
explicit violation of law. Further recommendations were: "Conduct covert opera-
tions on a large and effective scale" throughout Indochina, in particular, to "Ex-
ploit available means to make more difficult the control by the Viet Minh of North
Vietnam", to defeat Communist subversion and influence, to maintain non-Com-
munist governments elsewhere in Indochina, and "to prevent a Communist victory
through all-Vietnam elections". These proposals not only express an open con-
tempt for solemn treaty obligations (the U.N. Charter in particular), but also
indicate a clear commitment to subvert the Geneva Accords. I might add that the
contents of this document and the events of the nex few years are, in my opinion,
presented quite inadequately in the Pentagon Papers history.
In a parody of the law, planners repeatedly insisted that "After, 6m t only after,
we have established a clear pattern of pressure" could peaceful means be consid-
ered (William Bundy, August 11, 1964). The Pentagon historian notes that Presi-
dent Johnson's "initiative" of April 7, 1965, "was in accord with the 'pressures
policy' rationale that had been worked out in November, 1964, which held that
U.S. readiness to negotiate was not to be surfaced until after a series of air strikes
had been carried out against important targets in North Vietnam" (III, 356).
"Significantly", the peace initiative was preceded by intensive bombing. Repeat-
edly in subsequent years, apparent negotiations opportunities were undercut by
sudden escalation of bombing (IV, 135, 205). The Pentagon historian regards this
as "inadvertent" or "unfortunate coincidence". It is possible, however, that each
incident is an example of the "pressures policy", the general policy of application
of force prior to efforts towards peaceful settlement of disputes, in explicit con-
tradiction to the law. Cf. U.N. Charter, Articles 2, 33, 39.
The "pressures policy" rationale was inevitable, given the commitment to a
"non-communist regime" and the realization that a settlement based on indigenous
political forces would probably not achieve this objective. The political weakness
93
of the U.S.-imposed regimes led to the strategy of annihilation, out of "military
necessity" ; it also led to reliance on force in advance of and in place of the peace-
ful means prescribed by law.
The essence of the U.S. government position is revealed by public statements
explaining the concept of "aggression". Consider, for example, the fairly typical
remarks of Adlai Stevenson before the U.N. Security Council, May 21, 1964 (III,
715-6). He observed that "the point is the same in Vietnam today as it was in
Greece in 1947." In both cases the U.S. was defending a free people from "internal
aggression". What is "internal aggression"? It is "aggression" by a mass-based
indigenous movement against a government protected by foreign power, where the
"internal aggression" has the kind of outside support that few wars of liberation
have lacked (the American revolution, to cite one case). In the case of Greece, as
of Vietnam, the Administration has insisted that the "internal aggressors" were
merely agents of a global conspiracy directed by Moscow or "Peiping", in both
cases, in defiance of available evidence, though even if it were true, U.S. inter-
vention would not have been permissible without Security Council authorization.
As noted, the Government in effect conceded that the intervention was illegiti-
mate, by insisting upon its authority to intervene in the case of local subversion
and aggression not constituting armed attack, that is, "internal aggression".
The jCS in February, 1955, foresaw three basic forms in which aggression in
Southeast Asia can occur: a) Overt armed attack from outside of the area, b)
Overt armed attack from within the area of each of the sovereign states, c) Ag-
gression other than armed, i.e., political warfare, or subversion.
The concept of overt armed attack from within a sovereign state is Ambassador
Stevenson's "internal aggression". In defining "political warfare" as a form of
aggression, the Joint Chiefs reveal that they comprehend with precision and
insight the fundamental position of the U.S. executive.
Many other examples can be given, from the Pentagon history, to illustrate the
same concept of "internal aggression". Indigenous forces are carrying out "in-
ternal aggression" against regimes chosen to rule by foreign force, and protected
from their own population by this foreign force ( allegedly acting in "collective
self-defense" against this "aggression"). Ultimately, force is drawn into the con-
flict in support of the indigenous rebellion, and we hear cries from Washington
about the perfidy of the North Vietnamese aggressors and their allies. To cite
only the most obvious case, consider the talks of "North Vietnamese aggression"
today, aggression that is taking place in areas that were invaded and occupied by
the American military seven years earlier, and devastated in American military
operations. I need not spell out the facts, which have been described in ample
detail elsewhere.
The Pentagon Papers provide evidence of a criminal conspiracy of long dura-
tion to engage the United States in aggressive war. One may debate the suffi-
ciency of the evidence, but hardly its existence. It is natural, if somewhat ironic,
that the Justice Department, instead of investigating the possible criminal con-
spiracy exposed by the Pentagon Papers, has chosen rather to investigate and
prosecute those who have revealed these acts to the public. Senator Fulbrigbt has
stated, in a different but related connection, that: "I and some of my colleagues
have almost been reduced to the situation where it makes no difference what is
put into law, the administration will not abide by it." He has also expressed his
hope that some day "this country will return to its senses and we will then have
an opportunity to resurrect the basic principles of law on which this country was
founded" (Congressional Record, October 4, 1971). I should only like to add
that thousands of draft resisters and deserters and others have reluctantly un-
dertaken civil disobedience on the basis of concerns that are, in my opinion, rather
similar. Having called off the game of obedience to law, the Administration has
forfeited its authority to enforce the rules.
The Administration attitude toward Congress and the public is of a piece
with its concern for legal obligations. The unending record of deceit illustrates
a good deal of contempt for Congress and the public, in my opinion. For example.
Secretary Rusk, testifying before this Committee on January 2S, 1966, stated
that by January, 1965 the 325th Division of the North Vietnamese Army had been
moved to South Vietnam, an act that constituted "agression by means of an
armed attack" and entitled the U.S. to respond under Article 51 of the U.N.
Charter. He requested this assertion in testimony on February 18, 19(16. On this
crucial matter the Pentagon Papers tell a different story. The first reference to
94
regular PAYX units appears in a CIT-DIA memorandum of April 21, 19G5 which
"reflected the acceptance into the enemy order of battle of one regiment of the
325th PAYX Division said to be located in Kontum province" (III, 438). Chester
Cooper, who was responsible for preparing the material on infiltration, writes
that by the end of April "it was believed" that one battalion of regular PAVN
i roops were in South Vietnam at this time (The Lost Crusade, 1970, p. 276-7).
Evidently this and later reports were not too persuasive. On July 2, in a memo-
randum to General Goodpaster, John McNaughton states : "I am quite concerned
about the increasing probability that there are regular PAVN troops either in
the II Corps area or in Laos directly across the border from II Corps" (IV, 291,
277). On July 14, the JCS included one regiment of the 325th PAVN division in
i heir estimate of 48,500 "Viet Cong organized combat units" (IV, 295), and a
SNIE of July 23 predicted that if the U.S. increased its strength in South Viet-
nam to 175,000 by November 1, then in order to offset this increase, the Com-
munists would probably introduce a PAVN force totalling 20,000 to 30,000 men
by t he end of 1965 ( III, 484f. ) .
For comparison, note that on April 21, 1965 Secretary McNamara reported that
33,500 U.S. troops were in-country in addition to 2,000 Koreans who had been
dispatched on January 8, 1965 (III, 706: III, 139). He further reported the
unanimous recommendation of the Honolulu Meeting of the preceding day that
U.S. forces be raised to 82,000 supplemented with 7,250 Korean and Australian
troops — the day before the "ominous" CIA-DIA report. On July 1, planned U.S.
deployments were 85,000 troops (III, 475). In mid-July, when the JCS reported
one PAVN regiment in the South, the President approved the request that the
U.S. troop level be raised to 175,000 in 1965, with another 100,000 recommended
for 19G6, and an estimated U.S. killed-in-action of 500 per month (III, 396, 416;
IV, 297, 299). Recall that the U.S. troop level had reached 23,000 by the end of
1964 (II, 160) and that U.S. forces had been directly engaged in combat opera-
tions for three years, at that point.
The contempt for the public is of the same order. For example, on February 26,
1966 the President stated : "We do not have on my desk at the moment any un-
filled requests from General Westmoreland" (New York Times edition of the
Pentagon Papers, p. 467). In fact, there was at this time a request to double the
troop commitment, and the President had on his desk a Memorandum from the
Secretary of Defense stating that with the deployments recommended (400,000
by the end of 1966 and perhaps more than 600,000 the following year), U.S.
killed-in-action could be expected to reach 1,000 per month (IV, 309, 623-4). The
Administration view was accurately expressed by William Bundy, when he stated
that if policies are to be modified, then "a conditioning of the U.S. public" is
necessary (he added that where this cannot be done with sufficient rapidity, the
executive may find itself trapped by its earlier misrepresentations — IV, 611). It
goes without saying that government officials have no legal authority to misrep-
resent matters to the public, or — under a reasonable interpretation of the First
Amendment — to prosecute the exposure of their deceit.
The general attitude towards American democracy is revealed in a striking
way during the deliberations of 1964. Plans for the February 1965 escalation were
undertaken with an awareness of the necessity for waiting until the President
had a Congressional mandate and a popular mandate. The planning through 1964
places "D-Day" shortly after the elections. After the Tonkin Gulf incident and
the President's "smashing victory at the polls", his "feasible options increased",
the Pentagon historian relates : "President Johnson was now armed with both a
popular mandate and broad Congressional authorization" and could therefore
proceed (III, 4f.). During the September deliberations, "unity of domestic Amer-
ican opinion" was regarded as precondition to escalations, but "during the
November debates, this is no longer an important factor". In the interim, the
President had been elected "with an overwhelming mandate" (III, 113-6).
It is remarkable that nowhere does anyone take note of the fact that the Con-
gressional support was obtained in a rather dubious fashion, and that the popular
mandate was not to escalate. The obvious conclusion to draw from this history
is that peace-minded people should have voted for Senator Goldwater, so that
the "popular mandate" would have been less overwhelming, since evidently it was
onlv its scale and not its character that mattered. m
To a large extent, the debate over the war counterposes the "optimists , who
believe that with persistence we can win, to the "pessimists", who argue that the
U S cannot, at reasonable cost, guarantee the rule of the regime of its choice in
95
South Vietnam. There is a third position which, unfortunately, is barely repre-
sented in policy-making so far as the documentary record indicates : namely, that
the U.S. executive should abide by the supreme law of the land and refrain from
forceful intervention in the internal affairs of others. It appears that successive
Administrations believed that Vietnam was the victim of a Kremlin-directed
conspiracy in 1950, that there was "Aggression from the North" a decade later,
and so on. They had the legal authority to express these beliefs and to appeal to
the Security Council of the U.N. to determine the existence of a threat to peace.
That they did not do so is self-explanatory. The U.S. executive had no authority
to back French colonialism, to impose a terroristic regime (or even a benevolent
democracy) on South Vietnam, to engage in clandestine war throughout Indo-
china, or to carry out a full-scale invasion of South Vietnam in 1965, demolishing
the peasant society, or to wipe out the Plain of Jars and much of rural Cambodia
under President Nixon, or to bomb Haiphong, or to carry out any of the other
actions that have led to mass revulsion in this country and throughout much of
the world. Had the U.S. executive been strictly bound by its legal obligations,
which in my opinion do express reasonable principles of international behavior,
we would never have found ourselves in the Indochina war.
Why, then, did the U.S. become so deeply engaged in this war? In the early
period, the documentary record now available presents a fairly explicit account
of rational, if cynical, pursuit of perceived self-interest. The U.S. has strategic
and economic interests in Southeast Asia that must be secured. Holding Indochina
is essential to securing these interests. Therefore we must hold Indochina. A
critical consideration is Japan, which will eventually accommodate to the "Soviet
Bloc" if Southeast Asia is lost. In effect, then, the U.S. would have lost the Pacific
phase of World War II, which was fought, in part, to prevent Japan from con-
structing a closed "co-prosperity sphere" in Asia from which the U.S. would be
excluded. The theoretical framework for these considerations was the domino
theory, which was formulated clearly before the Korean war, as was the decision
to support French colonialism.
It is fashionable today to deride the domino theory, but in fact it contains an
important kernel of plausibility, perhaps truth. National independence and revo-
lutionary social change, if successful, may very well be contagious. The danger
is what Walt Rostow, writing in 1955, called the "ideological threat", specifically,
"the possibility that the Chinese Communists can prove to Asians by progress in
China that Communist methods are better and faster than democratic methods"
{An American Policy in Asia, p. 7). Similar fears were expressed by the State
Department and the JCS in 1959 (Government edition of the Pentagon Papers,
X, 1198, 1213, 1226). State therefore urged that the U.S. do what it can to retard
the economic progress of the Communist Asian states (ibid., 120S), a decision that
is remarkable in its cruelty. A similar concern for Chinese "ideological expan-
sion" was expressed in the planning for escalation in the fall of 1964 (III, 218,
592). Fear was expressed that "the rot would spread" over mainland Southeast
Asia, and that Thailand (always "the second line of defense") would accommo-
date to Communist China "even without any marked military move by Communist
China" (III, 661). The "rot", in these cases, is surely the "ideological threat".
Recall that in this period there was much talk of a competition between the
Chinese and the Indian models of development. In this context, fear of Chinese
"ideological expansion" gave substance to the domino theory, quite apart from
any speculation about Chinese aggression or Kremlin-directed aggression by the
Viet Minh.
It is interesting that the domino theory was never seriously challenged in the
available record, though its more fantastic formulations were discounted. Rather,
there was debate about timing and probability. Stripped of fantasies, the theory
was not implausible. Successful social and economic development in a unified
Vietnam, Communist-led on the Chinese model, might well have posed a "threat"
to other developing countries, in that peasant-based revolutionary movements
within them might have been led to follow this model instead of relying on the
industrial powers and adapting their pattern of development to the needs and
interests of the industrial powers. This might very well have led to Japanese
moves to accommodate in some fashion to the "closed societies" of East Asia,
with a possible impact on India, ultimately even the Middle East, as the domino
theory postulated : not by invasion, which was most unlikely, but by "ideological
expansion", which was not so improbable. In the Kennedy period, Vietnam was
elevated to the status of a "test case", and, I think it is fair to say, a degree
98
•of hysteria was introduced into planning. But nevertheless the rational core of
policy-making remained. Developing nations must be taught a lesson: they must
observe the rules, and not undertake "national liberation" on the "do-it-yourself"
Chinese model, with mass mobilization of the population and a focus on internal
needs and resources.
Possibly the threat has now diminished, with the vast destruction in South
Vietnam and elsewhere, and the hatreds and social disruption caused by the
American intervention. It may be, then, that Vietnam can be lost to the Viet-
namese without the dire consequences of social and economic progress of a sort
that might be quite meaningful to the Asian poor.
The documentation for the pre-Kennedy period gives substantial support to
this interpretation of U.S. motives. For example, NSC 48/1 (December, 1949)
warned that Southeast Asia "is the target of a coordinated offensive directed by
the Kremlin" (this is "now clear"). The industrial plant of Japan and such
strategic materials as Indonesian oil must be denied to the "Stalinist bloc", which
might otherwise attain global dominance; they must be kept in the Western
orbit. Japan is the crucial prize in Bast Asia. Communist pressure on Japan
will mount, because of proximity, the indigenous Japanese Communist movement
which might be able to exploit cultural factors and economic hardship, and "the
potential of Communist China as a source of raw materials vital to Japan and
a market for its goods". Japan requires Asian food, raw materials, and markets:
the IT.S. should encourage "a considerable increase in Southern Asiatic food and
raw material exports" to avoid "preponderant dependence on Chinese sources".
Analogous considerations hold of India. Furthermore, these markets and sources
of raw materials should be developed for U.S. purposes. "Some kind of regional
association . . . among the non-Communist countries of Asia might become an
important means of developing a favorable atmosphere for such trade among
ourselves and with other parts of the world."
The general lines of this analysis persist through the Truman and Eisenhower
Administrations (cf. NSC/64, NSC 48/5. NSC 124/2, etc.). To cite one case, an
NSC staff study of February, 1952, warned that :
The fall of Southeast Asia would underline the apparent economic advantages
to Japan of association with the communist-dominated Asian sphere. Exclusion
of Japan from trade with Southeast Asia would seriously affect the Japanese
economy, and increase Japan's dependence on United States aid. In the long run
the loss of Southeast Asia, especially Malaya and Indonesia, could result in such
economic and political pressures in Japan as to make it extremely difficult to
prevent Japan's eventual accommodation to the Soviet bloc. (I, 375)
We know from other sources that the U.S. put pressure on Japan to put a stop
to its "accommodation" with China, offering access to Southeast Asia as an
explicit inducement. Vietnam was regarded as "the Keystone to the arch, the
finger in the dike" (John F. Kennedy, 1956 — the terminology is characteristic
of the period).
It is often argued that U.S. intervention was motivated by "blind anti-
communism" and other errors. It is necessary, however, to distinguish between
two kinds of "anti-communism". Opposition to indigenous movements in Asia
that might pursue the Chinese model of development is not "blind anti-commu-
nism". Rather, it is rational imperialism, which seeks to prevent any nibbling
away at areas that provide the Western industrial powers (and Japan) with
free access to markets, raw materials, a cheap labor force, the possibility for
export of pollution, and opportunities for investment. On the other hand, refer-
ence to a "coordinated offensive directed by the Kremlin" against Southeast Asia,
with the Viet Minh as its agent, is indeed "blind anti-communism", that is. pure
ideolocry. unsupported by evidence, but extremely useful as a propaganda device
to rally domestic support for military intervention against indigenous com-
munist-led movements. The Russians behave no differently when they invade
Czechoslovakia. They state, and perhaps even believe, that'thev are doing so to
protect the Czech people from the machinations of Wall Street, the CIA. and
the West German aggressors. In fact, they are seeking to preserve the Russian
empire from erosion from within.
Administration spokesmen have held to the view that bv destroving Vietnam
we are somehow standing firm against Chinese or Russian aggression. As Geonre
Carver of the CIA once put it. our objective is: "Demonstrating the sterile
futility of the militant and aggressive expansionist policv advocated bv the pres-
ent rulers of Communist China" (IV, 82). One searches the record in vain for
97
evidence of this policy. The Pentagon historian observes that Chinese Communist
activity in Southeast Asia appeared "ominous" to Washington in late 1904 (III,
267), but he cites as the factual basis only "Sukarno's abrupt withdrawal of
Indonesia's participation in the U.N.", which led to various speculations. In
earlier years, there were determined efforts, always unavailing, to establish a
link between the Viet Minh and Moscow or Peking, though this failure in no way
shook the belief, virtually a dogma, that the Vietnamese revolutionaries must
be Chinese or Russian agents. The intellectual failures of the "intelligence com-
munity" are revealed by the fact that the Pentagon historians were able to dis-
cover only one staff paper, in a record of more than two decades, "which treats
communist reactions primarily in terms of the separate national interests of
Hanoi, Moscow, and Peiping, rather than primarily in terms of an overall com-
munist strategy for which Hanoi is acting as an agent" (II, 107; a SNIE of
November, 1961). Even in the "intelligence community", where the task is to get
the facts straight and not to proclaim that France is defending the territorial
integrity of Vietnam from the Viet Minh and the "Commie-dominated bloc of
slave states" (Acheson, October, 1950; I, 70), it was apparently next to impos-
sible to perceive, or at least to express the simple truth that North Vietnam, like
the Soviet Union, China, the U.S., and the NLF, has its own interests, which are
often decisive.
The record makes clear that the U.S. did not enter the Indochina war because
it had discovered the Viet Minh to be Russian or Chinese agents. Nor did it re-
peatedly escalate this war because it found that the NLF was a puppet of the
North (or China, or Moscow). Quite the opposite was true. First came the in-
tervention, for entirely different reasons, and then the effort to establish the de-
endence and control that was required for propaganda purposes, and also, no
doubt, for the self-image of the policy-makers. It is, after all, psychologically
much easier to destroy agents of Chinese aggression than those who had
captured the nationalist movement of Vietnam. One form of anti-comnmnism
motivated U.S. intervention : namely, opposition to indigenous communist-led
movements, under the assumptions of the domino theory. A second form of
anti-communism was invoked to justify the intervention, publicly and internally :
fear of a Kremlin-directed conspiracy or Chinese aggression — as far as we
know, the figment of imagination.
Much the same has been true elsewhere : e.g., in Greece in the 1940's and in the
Caribbean, repeatedly. A serious defect of the Pentagon study, inherent in Sec-
retary McNamara's guidelines, is its failure to relate U.S. policy in Vietnam to
developments elsewhere, even in Southeast Asia. Had the historians been able
to spread a somewhat wider net, they would have discovered, for example, that
the domino theory was expressed by Secretary of State Marshall with regard to
Greece in 1947 — in this case, the Middle Eastern countries, not Japan and Indo-
nesia, were the "farther dominoes" that concerned him. They would also have
discovered intriguing similarities between U.S. intervention in Indochina and in
Korea from 1945-50. They might have noted that the U.S. escalation of clandes-
tine activities in Vietnam and Laos in late 1963 and 1964 apparently coincided
with a similar escalation of attacks on Cambodia by the Khmer Serei, trained
and equipped by the U.S. Special Forces and the CIA. They would have ob-
served that from 1948, the U.S. was deeply involved in Thai affairs, supporting a
corrupt and at times savage military dictatorship, at first under a Japanese col-
laborator. They would have determined, in short, that the U.S. has not been a
confused victim of events, but an active agent, pursuing policies that fell within
a rather coherent global strategy : to carve out and stabilize a system of "open
societies", societies in which, in particular, U.S. capital can operate more or
less freely. Though this is far from the sole operative factor in U.S. policy, still
it is surely the beginning of wisdom to recognize its crucial role.
It is often argued that the costs of such intervention demonstrate that there
can be no underlying imperial drive. This reasoning is fallacious, however. In
the first place, the "costs" are in large measure profits for selected segments of
American society. It is senseless to describe state expenditures for jet planes
or cluster bombs or computers for the automated air war simply as "costs of
intervention." There are. to be sure, costs of empire that benefit virtually no
one within : 50.000 American corpses, or the deterioration in the strength of the
U.S. economy relative to its industrial rivals. But these general costs of empire
are social costs, while the profits are again highly concentrated. Senator Church
noted in recent Congressional Hearings that the U.S. has expended over $2 billion
98
in aid to Brazil since 1964 to protect a "favorable investment climate" for a total
investment of about $1.7 billion. This comes as no surprise to any student of
modern bistory. In many respects, the same was true of the British empire, after
the original rape of India. The costs of empire are distributed over the society
as a whole ; its profits revert to a few within. In this respect, the empire serves
as a device for internal consolidation of power and privilege, and it is quite ir-
relevant to observe that its social costs are often very great.
It should also be noted that planners cannot unerringly calculate costs in
advance. They cannot begin all over again if plans go awry. Though it is pos-
sible that the planners of the past 25 years would not have undertaken the effort
to dominate Indochina had they known the consequences, they did not have the
luxury of advance knowledge. On the assumptions of the domino theory, in its
more realistic versions, the original calculation was not an unreasonable one,
whatever one may think of its moral basis or its status in law. As I have indi-
cated, I personally think it was deplorable on such grounds, but that is a different
matter entirely. Furthermore, by the early 1960's, it is my impression that other
and more irrational factors had come to predominate, a matter which is of some
interest in itself, but which I will not explore here.
At one crucial point in the planning to escalate the war in 1964, William Bundy
raised the question whether it would be possible to carry out the preferred
escalatory option "under the klieg lights of a democracy" (III, 648). I think
he is quite right to raise this question, though not exactly for the reasons he
gave. Secrecy and deceit are essential components of aggression. The visibility
of the American war of annihilation in South Vietnam was undoubtedly a factor
in turning much of the population to protest and resistance, much to the credit
of American society. The social costs of empire, in a healthy democracy, would
impede imperial planners. But a system of centralized power, insulated from
public scrutiny and operating in secret, possessing vast means of destruction
and hampered by a few constraints will naturally tend to commit aggression
and atrocities. That is the primary lesson of the Pentagon history, though
we hardly need this valuable and illuminating record to establish the fact,
foreseen by Thomas Jefferson, for example. There has, in the past gener-
ation, been a contrived inattention to foreign policy on the part of the public.
Government secrecy has been a contributing factor, far outweighed, in my opin-
ion, by the intense indoctrination of the postwar period that has rendered th»
public inert until quite recently. It comes as no surprise, under these circum-
stances, that Jefferson's prediction was fulfilled. If citizens "become inattentive
to the public affairs," he wrote, then the government "shall all become
wolves," a perceptive remark and an accurate prediction. Successive adminis-
trations "became wolves," international predators, architects of one of the most
horrendous catastrophes of modern history.
What is worse, perhaps, very little has changed. Even many opponents of the
war pretend to themselves that others are to blame for the catastrophe of Viet-
nam. In a strong editorial statement against the war, the N.Y. Times editors
write :
"This is not to say that Americans, including the political and military com-
mnnds and the G.I.'s themselves, did not originally conceive their role quite hon-
estly as that of liberators and allies in the cause of freedom : but such idealistic
motives had little chance to prevail against local leaders skilled in the art of
manipulating their foreign protectors." (May 7, 1972) .
Once again we have the image of the American political leadership, noble and
virtuous, bewildered and victimized, but not responsible, never responsible for
what it has done. The corruption of the intellect and the moral cowardice revealed
by such statements defy comment.
Whether the U.S. will withdraw from Vietnam short of true genocide and per-
haps even the serious threat of international war is, I am afraid, an open
question. There is, unfortunately, sufficient reason to suppose that the same grim
story will be re-enacted elsewhere.
The Chairman. Dr. Chomsky, that is a very interesting- and provoca-
tive statement.
DOMIXO THEORY
I would like to clarify your point about the domino theory because
it has been discussed very much.
99
The domino theory which I think most writers and commentators
have talked about was of a military nature. It has always been con-
ceived of in military terms. It seems to me you are suggesting, not
that that has truth, but that the conception of the domino theory as a
social and ideological problem is a true one. In other words, the con-
cept for the organization of society which was developing in China and
under Ho Chi Minh was the real danger and, if allowed to proceed with-
out our intervention, it could succeed. In this sense you are saying it
had validity ; is that correct ?
Would you elaborate about it? I don't want to confuse people who
will interpret your saying that the domino theory is valid while they
are still thinking of it in military terms.
Mr. Chomsky. That's right. Yes, that is exactly my point. The
domino theory in military terms was always entirely senseless.
The Chairman. That is the one that has been promoted as being
justification for our policy, isn't it?
Mr. Chomsky. Well, that is the one that has been promoted in most
of the public statement.
The Chairman. That is what I mean.
Mr. Chomsky. But, of course, if you look more carefully at, for
example, the internal record or even, say. such public statements as
the one of Mr. Eostow which I quoted in a book that appeared in 1935,
you see a different and somewhat more plausible variant of the theory,
namely, the threat of "'ideological expansion." This, for example, was
introduced both by Michael Forrestal and by Ambassador William
Sullivan in the planning for the escalation in late 1964. They both
spoke of China's need for ideological successes, of the possible ideo-
logical expansion of China.
I really doubt very seriously that any American planner who thought
for a little about it believed that the Vietnamese were going to conquer
Thailand or they were going to conquer Malaya or Indonesia.
The Chairman. By arms ?
Mr. Chomsky. By arms, and that version of the domino theory, al-
though quite effective in enlisting public support for the war in a
certain period, nevertheless certainly had no reality.
EFFECT OF SOCIAL AND ECOXOMIC DEVELOPMEXT UXDER COMMCXTST
CONTROL
On the other hand, it was very likely that the unification of Viet-
nam, presumably this would have meant under Communist control.
would have proceeded to bring about the kind of social and economic
development that might have been quite meaningful and quite appeal-
ing to many of the Asian poor and, correspondingly, to peasant move-
ments elsewhere. Peasant-based movements might have adopted such
measures and gradually there would be an erosion of the areas of
the so-called Third World that were held to be absolutely essential
for the maintenance of American o-lobal policy, particularly because
of their impact on Japan, as I mentioned. This seems to me, whatever
one may think about this policy — frankly, I regard it as deplorable —
the American policy of intervention, in my opinion, is deplorable on
both moral and legal grounds, but that is not to say it was not rational.
100
The Chairman. What you are saying is we were afraid of the suc-
cess of the control of the NLF or the Communists ?
Mr. Chomsky. That is quite right and, in fact, if you look at the
rare intelligence analysis, and to my recollection there is only one in
the Pentagon Papers, sometime in 1959, that compares development
in South Vietnam to development in North Vietnam, its results were
hardly encouragingly to the American planners who hoped to prevent
the rot from spreading, as they put it.
The Chairman. But they used rot in the sense of the success of the
Administration, that is what I am trying to clarify.
Mr. Chomsky. That is right. I assume that when the American
planners in, let's say, late 1964, were worried that the rot would spread
to Thailand and then Malaya and Indonesia. I cannot believe they
thought the Viet Minh or the Vietnamese would somehow conquer
these countries. That was certainly a fantasy. But there is another
sense in which the rot might spread and I think that is why they em-
phasized that Thailand might "accommodate," the common word
that is used, even without military moves by Communist China or
anyone else.
U.S. ALLEGIANCE TO SELF-DETERMINATION OF PEOPLES
The Chairman. Where does this leave our whole central justification
for this and other activities — our allegiance to self-determination of
peoples ?
Mr. Chomsky. I do not believe that American policy or the policy
of any great power is ever, has ever been, determined by commitment
to self-determination of peoples. Rather it is determined by a com-
mitment to the national interest as that is defined by the dominant
groups in the society. Of course, virtually without exception or very
few exceptions, imperial powers state that their concerns are noble,
they are interested in self-determination or development or one thing
or another. I simply urge that we apply to ourselves the same stand-
ards that we apply to the Soviet Union, for example, when we read its
propaganda about its invasion of Czechoslovakia.
They also say that it was done from noble motives, to save socialist
democracy, to prevent the Czech people from being attacked, you know,
by the West Germans, run by the CIA and so on and so forth, and for
all I know they even believe it. But I do not believe it and I do not
see why anyone else should. The policy falls very simply into the long-
term Russian objective of extending and maintaining its very brutal
hold on its own empire, and the American policies have, as has often
been clearly expressed in internal documents and elsewhere, been
motivated by the desire to create a world of what are called open
societies, meaning by that societies which are open to penetration,
economic penetration and political control by the United States.
ECONOMIC ASPECTS
The Chairman. That, together with your emphasis upon the eco-
nomic aspects— you just said the opportunity for exploitation by our-
selves and our allies — seems to be a difference between your view and
101
Mr. Schlesinger. You emphasize the significance of the economic,
and Dr. Schlesinger, you thought this was of minor importance. Do
you see any difference in your view and Dr. Chomsky's on this point
and also on the domino theory ?
THIRD POSSIBILITY FOR MEANING OF DOMINO THEORY
Mr. Schlesinger. Well, on the domino theory: I think there is a
third possibility, has mentioned, lying between the notion that the
domino theory meant that Ho Chi Minh was going to start conquer-
ing other nations, on the one hand, and the notion of a purely ideologi-
cal effect, on the. other. As I recall the apprehensions of the time, the
phrase, the "falling dominoes", meant neither of those things so much
as it meant the thought that a success in Vietnam would stimulate
comparable guerrilla efforts in Laos and Cambodia and Thailand,
and so on, and that these would be no doubt helped by a victorious
Communist government in Saigon.
I say this, since we are listing various meanings of the term domino
theory, not because I take it seriously, but because I think that is what
they were talking about. In other words, they were talking about the
guerrilla example rather than about direct conquest by a Communist
government or about purely ideological impact.
OPEN DOOR CONCEPT
Yes, on the second point, this question of the economic interpreta-
tion of American policy after the war, obviously Mr. Chomslry and I
have very sharp differences. There is a school of thought in American
diplomatic historians which argues that, since the 1890's, American
foreign policy has been determined by the pursuit of an "open door"
for the export of American surplus goods and capital; and that, while
this policy has occasionally involved tactical differences within the
ruling elites of the United States as to how best to secure the open
door; practically everything in our foreign policy can be reduced to
the quest for the open door.
In fairness to Mr. Chomsky he says this is not the sole operative
factor in U.S. policy. I would say in certain situations where there
are not important military, political and strategic considerations in-
volved, then the desire to seek profits for American business may play
a role, and a most deforming one, in U.S. foreign policy. This is par-
ticularly true in the case of Latin America. I think there is little more
shaming than President Nixon's directive in January that we should
not only suspend all aid to Latin American countries that nationalize
American-owned firms without adequate compensation but that we
should try to prevent international agencies, like the IADB (Inter-
American Development Bank) and The World Bank, from making
loans to those countries. This sets up the U.S. government as a collec-
tion agent, for U.S. business.
However. I think this kind of concern plays only a marginal role in
our general foreign policy : nor do I think there is any necessary con-
nection between the pursuit of the open door, for example, and oppo-
sition to Stalinism.
102
As one looks for the concept of the open door in the writings, for
example, of American post-war leaders, I found only one very notable
quotation which I will read to you : _
'We cannot permit the door to be closed against our trade in East-
ern Europe any more than we can in China, We must insist on an open
door for trade throughout the world.'' Well, this did not come from
President Truman, Dean Acheson or one of those wicked fellows. This
Avas a quotation from Henry A. Wallace in the Madison Square Gar-
den speech of September 12. 1946, a speech that led to his dismissal
from the Truman Cabinet, This shows very clearly the disconnection
between the search for the open door, on the one hand, and any par-
ticular policies toward Bussia, on the other. In other words, the open
door idea is perfectly compatible with the Wallace policy of accommo-
dation or appeasement of the Soviet Union as well as with the Truman
containment policy; and. therefore, it cannot be said to have deter-
mined any particular course of policy.
Moreover, it is impossible to understand on this open door thesis
why, sav, the democratic socialists of Europe were unhappy about the
tin-eat of communism in the 1940's. Why should the British Labor
Government, why should Atlee and Bevin. why should the French
Government under Leon Blum, why should European social demo-
crats in general have been apprehensive about the Soviet Union? Why
should they have become quite critical at times of American policy in
this period as inadequately responsive to what they considered the
Soviet threat? Obviously they were not anti-Soviet in the interest of
expanding American capitalism.
U.S. ECONOMIC INTEREST IX THIRD WORLD
So it seems to me that there is no basis to say that the economic
motive was the determinant of our foreign policy, nor indeed does the
evidence cited bv Mr. Chomsky demonstrate any such basis. His evi-
dence mostly relates to Japan, and relates to economic matters as
components in the strategic questions. The thesis that the internal
needs of American capitalism required us to go into the third world
is not sustained in the evidence in Mr. Chomsky's statement nor indeed
can it be sustained. I will not bore you by repeating the figures in
my statement showing the very limited extent to which American
trade or American investment depends upon the third world.
Everyone knows that most of our trade is with other developed
countries, that most of our investment is in other developed countries.
Yon have to have industrialized countries to provide much in the way
of effective markets or much in the way of investment outlets. The
figures sustain this.
I do not think we have any kind of economic interest in the third
world that would have led us into Vietnam. We did have a political
strategic interest in keeping Japan as a friendly state and, therefore,
had some concern about the economic impact of certain developments
on Japan; but these were not a response to the need of American
capitalism, nor have I been able to find in the Pentagon Papers —
perhaps Mr. Chomskv has — any instance of business intervention in
the formation of our Vietnam policy.
103
MR. CHOMSKY CALLED "RATIONALIST"
Mr. Chomsky may be too mucli of a rationalist. Both as a historian
and as occasional participant in Government, I have concluded that
very much of what takes place in Government is a product of ignor-
ance, improvisation and mindlessness. I think that stupidity is a more
helpful factor in interpreting our policy than conspiracy.
The Chairman. Do you wish to comment on that \
Mr. Chomsky. May I comment on that? [Laughter.]
You see I am very — and perhaps I am too much of a rationalist
and I have never worked in the Government.
The Chairman. I did not hear that, speak up.
Mr. Chomsky. I am certainly a kind of a rationalist I guess, and
I have never worked in the Government so I cannot speak from in-
ternal knowledge.
Mr. Schlesinger. Was not reading the Pentagon Papers enough?
Mr. Chomsky. But I want to say the Pentagon Papers give an ex-
tremely rational, also an extremely cynical justification, up to about
1960, for an immoral or illegal intervention that would have supported
long-term American interests. I do agree after 1960 things became
somewhat different with the test case rhetoric and so on and so forth.
SO-CALLED ERRORS HAVE SYSTEMATIC QUALITY
Now I think it is a little unsatisfying to attribute American policy
to stupidity. For one thing, the errors, so-called, have a very system-
atic quality. It is a fact that one of the errors, so-called, committed
by the allegedly stupid leaders is that invariably, I believe invariably,
I know of no counter-example, a true revolution which takes place
inside the American dominated system is interpreted as being con-
ducted by agents of the international Communist conspiracy.
Xow it is very striking, and in fact the Pentagon Papers lend a lot
of illumination to this. The intelligence community was assigned the
responsibility in 1948 of demonstrating this thesis, of proving that Ho
Chi Minh was nothing but an agent of international Communist
imperialism, and it is rather amusing to run through the record. I
mean if you go through the documents, and particularly in the gov-
ernment edition, you discover they kept trying to show it. They never
were able to. They investigated all sorts of possibilities: the Bangkok
legation of the U.S.S.R. or the Shanghai Tass office, or one thing or
another, and they were never able to prove what they felt had to be
true, that the Viet Minh were agents of international Communist
aggression. And then after their total failure to establish this fact it
was taken as doctrine, and stated, formulated.
The Chairman. Is that not an example of what
Mr. Chomsky. I do not regard that as stupidity.
The Chairman. I see.
Mr. Chomsky. Not at all. Because this, you see
Senator Symington. What would you call it?
The Chairman. What would you call it (
Mr. Chomsky. I would call this a very rational approach towards
developing a technique of propaganda which will enlist the Ameri-
104
can population behind the opposition to indigenous communism, and
I should note that that very same story has been recapitulated over
and over again within the domain of American control. We have held,
for example, that in Guatemala in 1954, the Arbenz regime was an
agency of international Communist conspiracy. Take another case. In
the Dominican Republic in 1965, the Johnson administration searched
very hard for agents of the Sino-Soviet bloc and finally, I think, was
able to come up with about seven of them who were, you know, over
10 years old and not dead. And then I recall once watching Eric
Sevareid on television describing this new and even more insidious
technique of Communist aggression, namely, smallness of numbers,
which makes the United States look ridiculous and makes it harder to
find the aggressors and so on and so forth. Quite the same was true in
Greece, for example, in the forties. The United States claimed, con-
trary to available evidence, that the Greek guerrilla movement was
initiated and supported by Stalin. Walt Rostow has continued to claim
this over the years, never presenting any evidence. He has done it again
in 1960, 1962; for all I know, he still makes this claim. The evidence,
■of course, is not definitive but such as exists lends no support to this
theory. In fact, it indicates that Stalin was probably opposed to the
Greek guerrillas and was rather satisfied with the post-war imperial
settlement which gave him substantial control over the domains he
wanted. In fact, we know from evidence of Djilas and others he tried
to call off the Greek guerrillas, and there is reasonable speculation that
he was opposed to the potential of an independent. Balkan Communist
system very likely of a Titoist nature which would be a counterweight
to his hoped-for monolithic power.
For exactly the same reasons Stalin was always very lukewarm about
Mao, when one looks over the record. I was glad to hear Mr. Schlesin-
ger say. if I quote him exactly, that there may never have been a Sino-
Soviet bloc. Well, in the late forties there is evidence, not definitive but
suggestive, that Stalin was anything but enthusiastic about the triumph
of Chinese communism. I do not think that he could have predicted
the current level of confrontation but I think a goo-politician, if you
like, would have understood that a force that was capable of unifying
China under so-called Communist leadership, would ultimately refuse
to bend to Russian will, would be a disruptive force in the world order
that the Russians hoped to control and, in fact, would challenge their
always quite fraudulent revolutionary pretentions in the so-called
third world.
SYSTEMATIC ERROR IN WHAT IS ALLEGED TO BE STUPIDITY
So my point is this really : There is a highly systematic error in what
is alleged to be the stupidity of the Government officials. Xow that,
I think, is very hard to explain on grounds of stupidity. You would
expect perhaps random error if decisions were really made on the basis
of stupidity but I find the error to be systematic. I think a very good
first approximation to a criterion that 'determines which elements in
foreign societies are designated as our friends, and which ones are des-
ignated as our enemies, a very reasonable first approximation is given
by the principle that those forces which will maximize the openness of
their society to American free entry, that means free flow of capital,
105
free flow of investments, so on and so forth, those elements are our
friends and the ones who oppose this are our enemies. And I believe if
one applies this criterion one will find that it gives a remarkably
accurate characterization of American policy over many years.
This explains not only why we are anti-Communist, but also why we
have been anti-Fascist, rather selectively to be sure, and why we have
been anti-colonialist unless the only alternative to colonialism was an
indigenous Communist movement which would in fact close its society
and carry out mobilization of the population in kind of a do-it-your-
self, Chinese model development.
JAPAN PRIMARY MOTIVE FOR U.S. INTEREST IN INDOCHINA
Now, on the matter of the open door, I do not really agree. First of
all, let me make clear, there is, I think, one point of agreement be-
tween us. I am not maintaining in any written testimony or what I
stated today that the U.S. tried to conquer, I guess that is the right
word, Indochina merely because of its direct interest in access to the
third world. Rather, I insist it was Japan that was probably a pri-
mary motive. "We were concerned from the beginning that the work-
shop of the Pacific would not carve out once again an independent
closed co-prosperity sphere as it threatened to do in the late 1930's,
possibly even accommodating to what has been called the "Stalinist
bloc," perhaps posing a very serious military threat to us and cer-
tainly, of course, closing off a vast segment of potential expansion
for the then projected American economic domination of the world.
So Japan was probably the primary factor, and the examples I have
quoted from the National Security Council memoranda and so on I
think indicate that.
AMERICAN INVESTMENT IN THIRD WORLD COUNTRIES
Secondly, I think it is worth pointing out although it is entirely
true, as Mr. Schlesinger says, that the American investment in
third world countries is slight proportional to GNP, neverthe-
less it is quite extensive. In fact, if you want to see how people who are
interested in economic expansion view the domino theory, it is useful
to read business journals. For example, if you look at the 1972 annual
report of the Far Eastern Economic Review, which is a journal com-
mitted to economic liberalism, the editor, Derek Davies, has a review
article of the situation in which he also derides the domino theory as
total fantasy and absurd, but then he goes on to point out that East
Asia is perhaps the fastest growing area of economic development
in the world ; that 70 percent of the investment there is American : that
this investment has taken place behind the shield of American inter-
vention in Vietnam and could not have taken place otherwise ; and that
there are enormous prospects for Western and Japanese business
there; and that this is attributable to American courage — I have
forgotten his exact word — in preserving its position in Vietnam.
Of course, he describes this sometimes in the rhetoric of providing
freedom to the peasants, and so on and so forth, but these are the facts
he describes and this, it seems to me, is the rational version of the
domino theory: by preventing the rot from spreading, by prevent-
106
ing the model of development from succeeding, by maintaining the
second line of defense, by preventing guerrilla forces elsewhere from
undertaking similar developments, we have carved out an area where
there might in the future be considerable economic expansion.
OPEN DOOR NOT MAJOR THING
As to the open door itself, again let me emphasize I do not believe
American interests specifically in Indochina led us into the Indochina
War. I think it is American interests in the region, very much, as I
mentioned, as when Secretary Marshall formulated the domino theory
in 1947 with respect, to Greece; he was not really concerned with
Greece, he was concerned with the farther dominoes of the Middle East.
Similarly, the American domino theory in Asia. But, nevertheless,
despite this it is a fact that the open door is mentioned repeatedly
in the Pentagon Papers, sometimes explicitly in those words in the
early years.
To give you a couple of examples, and again let me emphasize I
do not think it was the major thing there: April 1945, the United
States, supporting the reconstitution of French authority, urged a
more liberal pattern, specifically liberalization of restrictive French
economic policies for the protection of American interests.
It was urged that Franco move to grant autonomy to its colonies
or the people may embrace ideologies contrary to our own or develop,
a Pan Asiatic movement against all western powers, and it was further
urged in the same statement that open door policies be pursued.
By 194C), December it was noted that the "French appear to realize
no longer possible to maintain closed door here and non-French in-
terests will have chance to participate in unquestioned rich economic
possibilities."
Although the resources of Indochina in fact are repeatedly men-
tioned, I could give yon some references
The Chairman. Dr. Chomsky, I think you made that point.
Mr. Chomsky. Yes.
POLITICAL ACCOMMODATION OBSTACLE TO SETTLEMENT
The Chairman. Before I yield to my colleagues, I want to bring
this down to a thing you said in the beginning which I think is
implicit in the testimony of both. You cited Dr. Kissinger's recent
statement that the only obstacle to settlement is the political accom-
modation. I interpret this to mean that the acceptance of a Commu-
nist regime, no matter how it comes to power, is utterly unacceptable
to this Government and that this recent move as of the day before
yesterday is still based upon the same basic objectives. I am re-
minded when I tried to elicit from Secretary Rusk what was our ob-
jective in Vietnam — I said to him, "If we win, what do we win?"
I ' 'did get an answer of any consequence. Of course, they never
accepted the idea that you are promoting: that is the fear that if
we allowed Communism to develop from indigenous forces, and ef-
fective regime might be created which would be a model and an
attractive one to other communities. It was always on some other
basis, as you know, and certainly the domino theory as then presented
107
was always in military terms, that is, in the sense that it would be
a conquest.
Applying this to the present situation, I would like both of you to
comment before I allow myself to yield to my colleagues. Is it your
belief that this recent move is based upon the same assumption that
we. under no circumstances, are going to permit a Communist regime
to take place, whether it be by elections or by the will of the people
or any other way? When the Administration saw that Vietnamiza-
tion was not working — in other words, we could not succeed in cre-
ating a client regime which would allow us to do what we pleased
there — then they would take this drastic action.
I would like' both of you, if you would, to try to interpret, as a
consequence of this inquiry, how you assess the present situation.
PRESENT SITUATION IN VIETNAM
I wonder, Dr. Schlesinger. if you would start on this since we have
just heard Dr. Chomsky. What is your assessment of the present
situation and is there any possibility of a political negotiated set-
tlement of the war as it now goes on in Vietnam.
Mr. Schlesinger. I think the present situation is discouraging evi-
dence of the extent to which intelligence does not rule our public
affairs. It seems to me President Nixon in his speeches of the last
2 weeks, including the one at the Connally barbecue, has reproduced.,
nearly all the fallacies, with the single exception of the threat of
China, that have marked the evolution of our policy during all these
years.
I think that lie believes them. Perhaps Mr. Chomsky would disa-
gree. But when the President invokes the Munich analogy, when he
says if we do not stand here their- is going to bo trouble in the Middle
East, and so on, I think that is a perfectly genuine belief. It is a belief
that Secretary Rusk had and it is a belief, as I said in my statement,
that many people grew up with after the thirties — the notion that
appeasement is the inevitable precursor of renewed aggression is one
deeply implanted in their minds. I am afraid President Nixon has not
recognized the extent to which the world has changed and the extent
to which there is a vast difference between North Vietnam, on the one
hand, and Nazi Germany, on the other.
To this degenerate idea of collective security, in which I think he
honestly believes, he has added the suggestion that his personal pi
tige is somehow involved. He puts it outside himself a bit by talking
about "respect for the office of the Presidency." "What he really
to mean is a desire to avoid what he would regard as political or
personal humiliation. But. with extraordinary insensitivity he is un-
able to see that he is trying to avoid this at the expense of indicting
comparable personal and political humiliation on other people.
Why a President of the United States should suppose that North
Vietnam and the Soviet Union would find acceptable a public humilia-
tion which he would not accept himself I cannot imagine. '■ fort
to control foreign policy by ultimatums, -of the kind that President
Nixon declared on Monday night, is a very dangerous effort.
I think the fallacies in his approach are abundant. He has added,
I would say, one other fallacy to his collection; and that is the notion
83-605—73 S
108
that the Soviet Union can deliver Hanoi. This notion has always
dogged him. He has never been able to understand that the age of the
superpowers is over. The big states are as often captives of their client
states as they are able to dominate these client states. North Vietnam
is a national state which has been fighting this war for 20 years and is
not going to be much deflected by the preferences of the Soviet Union
or of Peking, nor indeed can the Soviet Union be expected to black-
mail Hanoi by cutting off aid to it and still maintain any kind of
position in the Communist world.
So I would think that this is a — on its surface- — a non-starter, quite
apart from the technical fact that nothing we do in mining the harbor
at Hanoi is going to affect military operations by the North Vietna-
mese in South Vietnam for many weeks.
I think the only possible hope in this speech is in the theory that,
under a mask of truculence, President Nixon proposes to beat a retreat.
The only sticking point in preventing a negotiated settlement has
been the belief of this Administration that the retention of a non-
Communist government in Saigon is of vital interest to the U.S. Had
Ave been willing to stand aside from the Saigon Government, I am
assured by people who were involved in the Paris negotiations in 1968,
we could have gotten a negotiated settlement in December 1968 or
January 1969. But President Johnson was unwilling to follow the
advice of Governor Harriman and Secretary Clifford, who favored
standing aside from the Saigon regime. The Vietnamization policy
tied the U.S. Government even more closely to the Saigon Government
because Vietnamization could succeed only as the Saigon Government
became stronger.
BASIS OF U.S. NEGOTIATIONS
Vietnamization and negotiation always seemed to me to be incom-
patible. Now Vietnamization has collapsed; and the interesting thing
was that when the President listed in his speech the conditions which
Hanoi must meet before he would stop mining the harbors, he did not
say anything about the Saigon Government. But Mr. Chomsky tells
me that in the Kissinger testimony, which I have not yet had an op-
portunity to read, Henry Kissinger does seem to cling still to the no-
tion of the preservation of a reliably non-Communist government in
Saigon.
As long as that is the basis of our negotiations, it seems to me our
negotiating efforts are a fake because we know this result will not be
accepted by the other side. For better or for worse, that is the fact of
the situation. If we want a negotiated settlement we will have to stand
aside from the Thieu Government and let the internal processes of
South Vietnam politics, whatever they may be, yield a result which
may be unpalatable to us.
The Chairman. Do you wish to comment on that briefly?
PRESENT POLICY THREATENS NUCLEAR WAR
Mr. Chomsky. Yes. I am in general agreement with this. I do believe
that the present policy threatens nuclear war, and that it is wholly
irrational on the ground of any interest of any segment of American
society. My only difference is I would trace this irrationality to around
1960.
109
WHETHER SOVIET UNION CAN DELIVER HANOI
As to the question of whether the Soviet Union can deliver Hanoi,
which Mr. Schlesinger raises, this is not a Nixon-Kissinger invention,
and I think we should understand how deeply rooted this is in our
policy. One of the most remarkable revelations in the Pentagon Pa-
pers, to my mind, is that the historians were able to discover only one
staff paper, of all the intelligence agencies in a record of over two
decades, that treated the North Vietnamese interests as if they might
be independent, as if North Vietnam might be anything other than
merely an agency of international communism.
Now, the intelligence community is paid to get the facts straight,
not to talk about how Ho Chi Minh is an agent of Kremlin aggression.
Yet the intelligence community, if the Pentagon Papers historians
really searched the files and this is all they could find, even the intelli-
gence community was unable to express the fact that North Vietnam,
like everyone else, including the NLF, has their own interests which
are often decisive. It was always assumed that somebody was con-
trolling the North Vietnamese, it was coming from outside.
Now we are asking the Soviet Union to impose constraints in the
utterly vain hope that it can call off the Vietnamese enemy, the Viet-
namese resistance forces, and I think that again we may use the
context of heightened confrontation to carry out a heightened esca-
lation of the war in Vietnam, including, perhaps an amphibious
Marine landing in the north or something else which might be quite
intolerable to public opinion in itself but might very well be damp-
ened, in a sense, by the great global confrontation, the missile crisis
atmosphere, which it appears the President is driving toward.
ISSUE OF INTERNAL SOUTH VIETNAMESE ACCOMMODATION
Now, Henry Kissinger in the comments quoted yesterday, assuming
again that the quotes are accurate, said that the only issue on which
negotiations have broken down is the formation of a coalition govern-
ment which will then negotiate with the PRG (Provisional Revolu-
tionary Government of South Vietnam). In other words, the nego-
tiations have broken down entirely on the issue of whether there will
be an internal South Vietnamese accommodation.
I think, assuming he is quoted correctly, that that expresses with
great clarity the weakness of the American position, and the essence
of the American position over a 25-year period.
COMMUNIST GOVERNMENT TAKEOVER THROUGH ELECTIVE PROCESS
Senator Percy. Mr. Chairman, I did not hear the answer to a very
important part of your question, and I think it should be clarified for
the record. A part of the question that you asked is whether or not
there is a policy that our Government has adopted that we would
permit a Communist government to take over through the elective
process, and I think for the record
The Chairman. Any process.
Senator Percy. Arid I think for the record, it should be clarified
that Dean Rusk made that eminently clear and this administration
110
has made it eminently clear that we would accept a Communist gov-
ernment if it were imposed by the elective process, but not by force.
Mr. Chomsky. If I may comment on that.
The Chairman. You may clarify it. I myself had interpreted it
to mean we would not accept it.
Mr. Chomsky. Yes.
Senator Percy. Statements have been made.
Mr. Chomsky. Statements have boon made but with some interest
ing conditions; namely, that this victory by the Communist govern-
ment has to be within the constitutional framework of Vietnam, which
happens to exclude communism, and within a system of laws which
happen to regard certain kinds of pro-communist activities as a crime
punishable by death.
In fact, it is laws of that sort which are the legal basis for the
Phoenix program of assassination and "neutralization," so-called, of
Viet Cong infrastructure or political representatives of the XLF.
Obviously, under those laws. Dean Rusk can say very easily that he
will permit a Communist victory, namely, within a constitutional
framework which does not permit them to function or talk even with-
out beir.-j; sentenced to death.
The Ch airman. How do you express it ?
Mr. Schlesinger. In the first place, I am doubtful as to what extent
national elections, western style elections, express the historical and
cultural processes of Vietnam. It has never. seemed to me that this is
necessarily a useful way of solving these problems unless it reflects
customs and traditions of the country.
In addition, looked at practically, the system of repression and
control which General Thieu has preserved and expanded in South
Vietnam would make any such elections as much of a farce or a
tragedy as the last election.
The Chairman. I had assumed you both agreed that an election
completely free of our or the present government's control, would not
be acceptable. This has been the sticking point all along. I assumed.
Perhaps it is well that you clarified it.
communications between congress and executive on foreign policy
I am going to ask this last question. Do either of you think the
Congress can do anything about this in view of the almost complete
embargo on communications between the Congress and the executive
on foreign policy, as demonstrated as late as the day before yesterday.
Mr. Schlesinger. I think that the Congress has been treated with
contempt over the last few weeks, not to speak over the last several
years. In my statement I acknowledged a certain sense of complicity
myself in promoting uncritical theories of a strong Presidency that
have helped shape the mood that led to this contempt for the Con-
gress. Senator Javits and I had certain differences about the war powers
bill, but, though the exact form of the bill had distressed me, I hoped
that the act of the Senate in passing that bill would have a chastening
effect upon the Executive, Yet the week after the Senate passed that
bill, the President took new and drastic action without any form of
effective congressional consultation.
Ill
Impeachment is a possible remedy, but it is entirely impractical at
this stage. Perhaps members of the Senate can go to the people and
make this an election issue. Given the technical obstacles to controlling
an Executive who does not wish to be controlled, the only way he can
be controlled is to make it clear that it is politically fatal for him if
he does not undertake a degree of cooperation.
The Chairman. Do you have any comment on that before I yield to
Senator Symington ?
Mr. Chomsky. Only one thing, I do not know what to suggest to
Congressmen. I would not presume to do so, but I think whatever they
do it should be done rapidly and energetically. It is not only the fate
of Indochina that hangs in the balance at this point but, it seems to
me, possibly that the threat of nuclear war is to be taken quite seri-
ously at this stage. Henry Kissinger is a man who made his academic
reputation with books in which he urged that we be willing to face
the risks of Armageddon in order to win limited conflicts, and I be-
lieve, as I interpret what is happening now in Government, that is
precisely now what the Government is doing. The urgency of this, I do
not think can be overstressed.
APPROPRIATIONS CUTOFF
Mr. Schlesinger. May I add one thing, I think the action of the
Democratic caucus in supporting the appropriations cutoff is some-
thing that should be pressed. Also Henry Kissinger developed theories
of nuclear war in the fifties but abandoned them or recanted in the
sixties.
Senator Javtts. It should be brought out that before the Democratic
caucus acted this committee acted in a completely bipartisan way for
a funds cut off.
The Chairman. Senator Symington.
THEORY OF FLEXIBLE RESPONSE
Senator Symington. Dr. Schlesinger, in your statement you say
something that interests me a great deal. I came into Government
before the end of World War II for a few months and have stayed
here every since. You can only at times wonder, how did we get into
this so deeply. I often ask it of myself. I notice that you say. "Thus
arose the counterinsurgency mystique" and then go on to talk about
the origin of the theory of flexible response.
Some time ago another member of the White House staff of Pres-
dent Kennedy and I were talking about this flexible response busi-
ness. Most of my Government experience has been in connection with
the military. It seems that here you have hit something very im-
portant. I asked him about it, flexible response, and I found he had
apprehensions about it also.
It seems the suggestions you have at the end of your statement
justify your apprehension, because these would not have to be sug-
gested if it was not for this new concept of flexible response. One
of the saddest things that has happened, to the country, in my opinion,
is the secrecy surrounding nuclear power. It has prevented much of the
112
use of that power which would also help us with the prevention of
pollution and waste. I have said before that in a 6-day visit to Eu-
rope with the Chairman of the Atomic Energy Committee, I learned
more about the true military power than in 18 years on the Armed
Services Committee and a decade on this committee. I would ask you,
do you believe in the theory of flexible response? It is a difficult
question, but after all, who is going to attack the United States with
some 5,700 nuclear warheads, Polaris submarines, et cetera. Reading
other points you make at the end of your statment, why do we have to
have this concept of Pax Americana when anvbody who attacked us
today knows they would be committing suicide?
Mr. Schlesixger. Let me answer that as frankly as I can. I was
strongly in favor of the concept of flexible response in the fifties and
in the sixties, early sixties. It seemed to me we were in a dangerous
situation when the only alternatives we faced if there were a mili-
tary challenge would be either the use of nuclear weapons or no re-
sponse at all. Therefore, I strongly supported the new strategy that
Secretary McNamara brought in.
His purpose in doing so, as we all remember, was to create alterna-
tives to nuclear warfare in Europe, and that seemed to me at the time
of the Berlin crisis of 1961 and so on, a useful thing to do. It seemed
to me then the more military options, that existed, the better the chance
of avoiding the resort to nuclear warfare.
I think that in retrospect, the more options that were created the
greater the temptation to use them. Had we stuck to the more rigid
and, to my mind, less intellectually defensible "massive retaliation"
strategy we would not have diversified our forces in such a way as to
enable us easily to undertake the Vietnam adventure. It would not
have excluded it because as we showed at the time of Korea we could,
if necessary, put forces on the field quickly; but it was much easier
when, as in Vietnam, we had well diversified forces in being.
Moreover, in 1961 there was crisis in Central Europe. Today if
Willy Brandt ran ^et his treaties through the Bundestag we may be
entering a period where there will be, in effect a settlement of the
territorial issues raised in the Second World War. This, too, seems
to me to reduce the need for forces prepared to leap in at the drop
of a hat.
I am not an expert on the defense budget : but it would seem to me
that, solong as we maintain a nuclear deterrent which can survive a
first strike, our need for conventional diversified forces is now much
reduced.The existence of such forces creates a temptation which I am
not. sure is beyond our capacity to resist.
Senator Symixgtox. Thank you.
Dr. Chomsky, would you comment?
WHERE LIMITED WARS 'WILL BE FOUGHT
< Mr. Chomsky. Yes, I have a rather different approach to that ques-
tion, a somewhat more skeptical one. I think we should ask ourselves
where those limited wars are to be fought, where is the limited re-
sponse to be exercised, where is counter-insurffencv to take place. I do
not believe that it would be in the slightest bit realistic to assume that
it will happen in Berlin. A real confrontation between the great powers
113
so far as I can see, would have every probability of escalating very
rapidly to a high level nuclear confrontation.
On the other hand, limited wars will be fought in countries like
Vietnam.
USE OF THEORY OF FLEXIBLE RESPONSE
The technology of counter-insurgency will be used in Latin Amer-
ica, and in my view, the theory of limited war, flexible response, and
counter-insurgency, was an effort, very much like those I discussed
earlier, to find a way to enlist the popular support of the American
people for the very costly effort of crushing indigenous movements in
the areas where the limited wars would be fought ; enlisting their sup-
port by making it appear to be somehow a matter of great power con-
flict which, of course, every American citizen must be very seriously
concerned with.
I do not see any way now or in 1958 at the time of the Draper
Committee discussions, that this whole ideology or technology had
anything to do with our conflicts, which are quite real, with our great
power rivals. They had to do with our efforts to maintain control of
weak societies, and the same is true of much of the technology that is
being developed today, as I see it.
Consider, for example, the automated battlefield which General
"Westmoreland is so happy about and which costs billions of dollars.
Nobody believes that the Soviet Union can be strewn with detectors
and sensors and that we can have helicopters flying over it sending
signals to central computers. Ridiculous. This is the kind of tech-
nology that can be used in wars against the weak. I think this is
characteristic of this whole system of flexible response, and, incidental-
ly, again the Soviet Union mirrors us on this matter.
PRICE OF GOLD
Senator Symington-. Right now we are talking about the political,,
military, economic, and moral problems incident to this recent escala-
tion. I noticed in this morning's paper that the price of gold was over
$54 an ounce in London. "We raised the monetary price of gold from
$35 to $38, but at the same time it must be remembered convertibility
was suspended last August. Now it is clear the $38 price is fictitious
based on the actual gold price. One expression going out of our lan-
guage is that the dollar is as good as gold.
DIVERSION OF U.S. RESOURCES AND ENERGIES
If we are going to do the things now everybody increasingly realizes
we must do at home so as to keep the people believing in the system,
I do not see how we can continue to stand this gigantic cost. Would
you comment?
Mr. Chomsky. I think that is accurate. As I said before, I am op-
posed to American imperial intervention when it succeeds or when it
fails but the fact of the matter is that from 1965 at least — we could
argue about the earlier years, but at least from 1965 the intervention
seems to me largely irrational and increasingly wholly irrational on
whatever cynical motivations one wants to accept. Well, just consider,
114
for example, our trade relationships with Japan, the trade balance
with Japan which everyone is really upset about, and properly so.
That trade balance shifted in 1965. Until then we always had a f ayor-
able trade balance with Japan. The weakening of American capitalism
with respect to its industrial rivals dates very precisely from this pe-
riod, and at this point, even earlier, as I said, but certainly at this
point the war lost its rational imperial motivations, which I disap-
proved of, and became irrational. This is, of course, not the first time
in the history of empire that a great empire has torn itself to pieces
by the irrational insistence of winning local wars and draining its
energies and its resources in doing so.
Senator Symington. Dr. Schlesinger, would you comment?
Mr. Schlesinger. Yes, sir, I absolutely agree with you. I think
much of our domestic troubles, and much of our incapacity to deal with
them, lias been a. consequence of the diversion both of resources and
attention to what, so far as the interests of the United States are con-
cerned, is a purely marginal and local problem on the other side of
the world. The domestic economic consequences of Vietnam and the
international economic consequences of Vietnam, horrifying as is the
slaughter and destruction, are another price this country will pay for
some time.
Senator Symington. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, gentlemen.
The Chairman. Senator Percy.
COMMENDATION OF WITNESSES
Senator Percy. Mr. Chairman, I would like to comment first on the
quality of the hearings we have had and the testimony. I think both
papers make a great contribution to our understanding of this prob-
lem, and certainly I think the staff and the Chair in calling these hear-
ings at this particular time, not knowing how important they would
be, had a great deal of foresight.
WHETHER VIET CONG WERE INDIGENOUS
Professor Chomsky, you describe the Viet Cong as indigenous. Was
not the Viet Cong organized by people who went north after 1954?
Although they obviously had local support, was not the control ulti-
mately from Hanoi?
Mr. Chomsky. Well, in the years up to 1959 there was no return,
to anyone's knowledge, of any southern regroupees. The southern
recroupees according to American intelligence, began returning in
1959. According to the Pentagon Papers history, questionable in my
opinion, it was determined bv a meeting of the Central Committee
of the Communist Party of North Vietnam in May 1959. However,
in Mareh_1959, President Diem already said that he had an Algerian
war on his hands and, in fact, the level of insurgency was extremely
high at that point. Let me, rather than go on with this, just simply
refer to what is probably the most outstanding source on it, a recent
study by Jeffrey Race, "War Comes to Long An," the most extensive
study on this matter, which shows quite clearly that the insurgency
was very much in progress, an indigenous war, in 1959 ; that the south-
115
ern regroupees then gave a good deal of substance to it as they ret urned
to their own areas and took part in the insurgency, which I see no
way of objecting to frankly, and then by 1965 the North Vietnamese
came in. Roughly, that is the picture.
HO CHI MINIl's OFFER TO U.S. OF ECONOMIC ROLE IX VIETNAM
Senator Percy. I happen to concur with the conclusions that Dr.
Schlesinger has come to on the economic goals. But, Professor Chom-
sky, Ho Chi Minn offered the U.S. a prime economic role in Vietnam
1944 through 1964. Why, if we were so interested in economic advan-
tage according to you, did we not seize this opportunity ?
Mr. Chomsky. Because it was recognized, as Dean Acheson put it
very clearly, that Ho Chi Minh is a Communist and, therefore, every-
thing else is irrelevant. The point is that an outside industrial power
can have only a very limited, and not a very profitable, role in the
development of what is called a Communist society. What is now
called communism, which in my opinion has not much to do with
traditional communism, is a system of independent development, mo-
bilization of the population, a society using its own resources for
internal development, not orienting itself toward either the world
market or toward the needs of the industrial powers. I think that was
understood and it was for that reason that, in a sense, rationally, Ho
Chi Minn's offer was rejected.
U.S. ECONOMIC POLICY TOWARD EASTERN EUROPE
Senator Percy. Here we have a strange case of a United States,
pre-eminent economically, supposedly obsessed by economic goals,
and yet is it not true today that the same Neanderthal thinking prevails
and has permitted us to get into a condition to exclude ourselves
essentially from the fastest growing markets in the world in Eastern
Europe, where today we are doing $350 million worth of business, and
the rest of the western world is doing $8 billion worth of business
in the very kind of items that we are able to supply. They would like
to buy from us, but we simply have let politics becloud our thinking.
Is not this same mentality really true today ?
Mr. Chomsky. Well, I would only very partially agree with that. I
agree it is irrational from an economic point of view to refuse to
trade with Eastern Europe and that is a case, one of the cases, where
ideology overcame rational self-interest.
But still, the major concern of any capitalist power, in my opinion,
for economic development elsewhere will not merely be in trade, it
will be in investment, it will be in the possibilities of expanding indus-
try, even of exporting industry overseas. For example, one of the
things we are doing in Asia, is exporting American productive capac-
ity. Naturally it will flow toward places where wages are lower and
where industrial unrest can be controlled, and so on and so forth. In-
vestment, access to strategic materials, to raw materials, opportunities
for placing industrial capacity overseas, the use of the labor force
overseas, all of these things are very important to an expanding indus-
trial power, and though trade is one of those many factors it is by no
means the only one.
116
American policy was based on the feeling that we could somehow
prevent the closing off of these areas in other respects, if we only
stopped trading with them. That could not have been the case and it
is not the case but, of course, even the fullest trade with, say, Eastern
Europe would still be of only limited interest to an expanding indus-
trial capitalist power.
LITTLE EVIDENCE OF ECONOMIC CONCERN IN PENTAGON PAPERS
Mr. Schlesinger. Could I comment just briefly on a couple of these?
I will not repeat why I do not think that the economic factors played
much role or why I think our vital economic relationships are with
industrialized and not non-industrialized countries. I do think it is
interesting in such vast volume of paper as the Pentagon documents
there is so little evidence of economic concern. It is necessary to pull
out of context a few statements and most of them have to do with
the situation of Japan and not of American capitalism.
TJ.S. POLICY IN VIETNAM BASED ON EUROPEAN REASONS
I would add that, so far as the decisions of 1944, 1945, 1946 were
concerned, they were made by a United States which was focusing on
Europe, and the real reason I think as to why we acquiesced in the
British-French imperial determination— the British determination to
put the French back and the French determination to go back into
Indochina — was because of our concern with the French situation in
Europe. We were persuaded by the French Government's statements
that the loss of Indochina would be a great blow to them, that it
would weaken them. And, given the very chancey and precarious situ-
ation in Europe in 1947, 1948, particularly in the year just before the
Marshall Plan, we went along for that reason. In other words, our
policy in Vietnam was based, in that period, essentially on European
reasons rather than on Asian reasons.
INITIATIVES TO EXPAND TRADE WITH COMMUNIST WORLD
Senator Percy. I presume both of you would support the initiatives
being taken now to expand trade with the Communist world.
Mr. Chomsky. Yes.
Mr. Schlesinger. OK by me.
U.S. POLICY TOWARD CUBA
The Chairman. Will the Senator yield for a question on that point?
How do you explain the completely adamant attitude toward any
review of our policy toward Cuba? The only explanation I see here
is the one you have been giving. I introduced a resolution and had a
hearing on it, but the administration absolutely did not want to even
review it. They do not want us to review it. They want it to stay
exactly where it is. This is a strange thing to me.
Mr. Chomsky. Well, the Alliance for Progress was an effort to con-
tain the "ideological expansion" of Cuba, the influence of its possible
success. I would suggest that if one could look in on the internal papers
117
of the administration they would show a deep concern that the Castro
regime might be reversed.
The Chairman. If they succeeded.
Mr. Chomsky. Certainly it would be likely to succeed with normal
relations with its industrial
The Chairman. And it assumes automatically that is inherently
bad, is that correct?
Mr. Chomsky. It assumes it is automatically bad when it occurs in
Cuba, in the Dominican Republic, anywhere in the American con-
trolled world.
The Chairman. Why is it not bad when it succeeds in Rumania or
Bulgaria or Russia ?
Mr. Chomsky. It was considered bad there. In fact, in the, early
period when you look back at 1943 and 1944 — —
The Chairman. How do you reconcile that with our attitude toward
China and Russia, and here the Senator is talking about better trade
which I am for. I cannot understand why this reasoning would not
apply to Cuba as well as the others.
Mr. Chomsky. Well, I think so, except the administration has ap-
parently given up the long-held hope that China would undergo an
internal collapse. After all, this hope was held certainly by our State
Department officials, it was expressed to me many times in the late
sixties, that China would undergo an internal collapse and become a
society of warlords and, you remember, people like Joe Alsop in 1962
were predicting a descending spiral which would lead to the disinte-
gration of the regime, and on this basis it was assumed we should do
our best to try to contribute to the inability of China to undertake
internal development.
I think by now that hope has been largely lost and other sorts of
relations have grown up.
Mr. Schlesinger. As a cigar smoker I have long been for im-
proving relations with Cuba. Mr. Chomsky said he could not think
of revolution, which we did not immediately identify as Com-
munist and did not try to subvert or prevent. There have been, of
course, some in Latin America, the Bolivian revolution of 1952 which
nationalized the tin mines and which was even accepted by a business
dominated administration, the Eisenhower administration. Actually,
when the Cuban revolution itself took place, there was considerable
reluctance on our part to say it was Communist, so much so that Am-
bassador Earl Smith had written a very bitter book denouncing the
Eisenhower State Department for not recognizing this, as he thought,
as a Communist revolution.
I can remember Castro coming to Cambridge, Mass., in 1959 and
speaking at the Harvard stadium. He was introduced by McGeorge
Bundy.
The revolution in Peru in 1966 has imposed all sorts of limitations —
of a kind I generally support — on the activities of American firms. No
one has called this revolution Communist, so I think there have been
a number of instances where such revolutions have not produced what
Mr. Chomsky described as an invariable and automatic American
reaction.
Mr. Chomsky. I think Mr. Schlesinger misheard what T said. T did
not say we put down any revolution which appeared anywhere. We did
118
not, for example, put clown the Chinese revolution, to take a better case,
but I said a good criterion to determine what we do is that those ele-
ments in other societies which are most amenable to opening that so-
ciety to American penetration are the ones we will support; and that
was" exactly the case, for example, in the Bolivian revolution. Eisen-
hower, quite intelligently on his assumption, supported the most right
wing group that had any chance of popular support, and in 10 years
that policy was successful and
Mr. Schlesinger. He accepted the success of the revolution.
Mr. Chomsky. Which was the group that headed, the most right
wing-
VIETNAM POLICY OF KENNEDY ADMINISTRATION
Senator Percy. Suppose we get back to the question. In your testi-
mony you indicated in a very candid statement that Vietnam policy
was not the Kennedy administration's finest hour. When the Kennedy
administration took office in early 1961, the U.S. military presence in
South Vietnam was about what the Geneva Accords allowed, 685 men,
and yet by May 1961 President Kennedy approved the deployment to
Vietnam of about 400 special forces, that is troops, and initiated a
covert war campaign against Xorth Vietnam.
As a member of that administration, and an important official within
it, can you shed any light as to why President Kennedy and his top
advisers thought that this important escalation, significant escalation
of U.S. involvement was necessary or desirable?
Mr. Schlesinger. I can shed no light on it beyond what appears
in the Pentagon Papers. I was not involved myself in ■
Senator Percy. From what you do know, can you give me the back-
ground? Were you associated with the administration at that time?
Air. Schlesinger. I was associated. I was too busy planning the Bay
of Pigs. [Laughter.]
I can only speculate that, as the Pentagon Papers suggest, there was
a feeling that the situation was getting worse and that it could be
stiffened, by the insertion of a small number of American troops. There
was a gathering counterinsurgency mystique, a pernicious illusion
that influenced the Kennedy administration. President Kennedy was
mostly concerned during that period not with Vietnam but with Laos.
He was trying to reverse the policv of the Eisenhower administration
on Laos; he was trying to bring Souvanna Phouma. whom the State.
Department regarded as a Communist, back into the picture. This
applies, I think, to Senator Fulbright's question about Cuba; chang-
ing a policy, as we all know, is extremely difficult, when the bureauc-
racy has a vested interest in the policy. The internal opposition to
changing the policy on Laos was very intense. It took Averell Harri-
man, a man of considerable persistence, a year to turn it back.
Senator Percy. Why did the administration feel they would suc-
ceed when the French had failed?
Mr. Schlesinger. Because when you look at the figures in 1961,
there were at that point, according to the embassy briefings in Saigon,
15,000 Vietcong, and there were 250.000 government troops. In a situa-
tion like that it was supposed that it would be rather easy to teach
the government troops a few tricks and they could take care of
themselves.
119
Senator Percy. How did they explain, with this great disparity of
forces, the inability of the South Vietnamese to cope with * the
situation ?
Mr. Schlesixger. Well, they never did explain it because there were
differences within the Kennedy administration on that point. The
first sending of American advisers took place in 1962, and for a time
the policy seemed to be working. Even the Communists called 1962
Dienvs year. There were those like Harriman, Roger Hilsman, and
Michael Forrestal in the White House who were very dubious as to
the depth of this success and very dubious about the strategic hamlet
program. They felt the problem was essentially political rather than
military. But this was the year of the Cuban missile crisis and many
other things, and the Pentagon was handling Vietnam. It was a great
mistake to permit the question to be defined as a military question.
DIE3I REGIME
Senator Percy. Can you give us an insight as to discussions that
might have been carried on at the time within the administration as
to the strengthens and the fragility of the regime that Diem had im-
posed on the country ?
Mr. Schlesixger. Harriman and Hilsman were very skeptical of
the strength of the regime. Our general and our ambassador. General
Harkins and Ambassador Xolting. were very confident of the strength
of the regime. The newspaper stories were far more accurate than the
top secret cables, and I have often believed our Vietnam policy would
be much better off if during the Kennedy administration no one had
ever opened a top secret cable from Saigon and instead read the New
York Times and Xewsweek. I have been skeptical every since about
Vietnam intelligence.
Senator Percy. Can you add anything to the character of the pop-
ular support or the viability of the Diem regime in your own judg-
ment at that time ?
Mr. Schlesixger. I do not think so. I think I was as much in-
fluenced by Governor Harriman and also by Ambassador Galbraith,
who stopped over at Saigon from time to time, and I was absolutely
persuaded they were right in thinking the regime had a very insecure
basis and that it was not democratic in any sense. However, that rase
did not have the conclusive visible proof it required until the Bud-
dhists riots in the spring of 1963, at which point it was suddenly
recognized that the Harriman analysis was more correct than the
Pentagon analysis.
WHETHER HISTORIAXS WERE CALLED TjPOX
Senator Percy. "We have called upon the historians now in hind-
sight to give us a perspective of what went on. President Kennedy
had a great interest in history and a knowledge of it. Can you tell us
from your oath knowledge the input that was called upon, whether his-
torians were called upon, to give an insight to the administration :it
that time when we were making policy decisions as to the very nature
of the Vietnam situation — whether thev had an insurgency or civil
war situation on their hands?
120
Mr. Schlesinger. So far as I know — I do not know about the in-
telligence branch of the CIA but so far as I know— no scholars were
called upon to give their ideas about it. Indeed, there were very few
courses given in American universities about Vietnam ; very few peo-
ple knew about Vietnam ; very few people had experience in the coun-
try. I think decisions were taken in an atmosphere of invincible ignor-
ance compounded by the fact, as I mentioned earlier, that the State
Department had been purged of those people who at least knew China
very well, and who would have served as the equivalents of our people
like Bohlen, Thompson and Harriman with regard to the Soviet Union.
As I say, I think the intellectual presumption involved in our Viet-
nam intervention was extraordinary, and our ignorance was invin-
cible and inexcusable.
■WHEN HAVE WESTERN POWERS SUCCEEDED IN SITUATIONS LIKE VIETNAM ?
Senator Percy. Has there ever been a situation in your opinion,
where Western powers have succeeded in meeting a situation similar
to that in Vietnam ?
Mr. Schlesinger. Well, I suppose there have been situations in the
10th century before nationalism became crystalized and hardened as it
has since become. There have been situations where a Western state has
been in a country for decades or centuries; the Portuguese are still
hanging on in Angola and Mozambique and have been there for a long
time. But for the Americans to come into Vietnam, a country which,
they knew practically nothing about, where none of them spoke Viet-
namese, few of them even spoke French, does represent an unusual a***
in history.
Senator Percy. Were the example of the British in Malaya and the
Huks in the Philippines used by the Kennedv administration at all as
examples of success, or did they feel that the Vietnam situation was
entirely different?
Mr. Schlesinger. No, they were, I think, misled by such successes.
Of course, in 1D61 there was a certain analogy perhaps between Malaya
and Vietnam in the size of the forces involved, though in Malaya
there was the ethnic differentiation which did not exist in Vietnam.
But success in the Philippines was made possible by a combination of
military action and social reform. That, too, was important and indeed,
as President Kennedy envisaged counter-insurgency, it was a program
of social reform. This was unrealistic because counter-insurgents are
not ordinarily social reformers.
Senator Percy. Mr. Chairman, I have a number of other questions
but I would like to yield to my colleagues.
The Chairman. Senator Pell ?
Senator Pell. I thank the Senator from Illinois for his courtesy.
COMMENDATION OF WITNESS
I admire highly Professor Schlesinger because he has the quality of
making history simple. I think so many historians complicate it and
there are few men like him, Toynbee and others, can make difficult
ideas lucid and one that we can follow.
121
HISTORICAL ANALOGY TO WHERE WE ARE TODAY
Now following up this same question of Senator Percy's, I am won-
dering if from your broad knowledge of history, sweep of history, yon
could give, us an analogy to where we are today. I think every single
idea is repetitious, and, as a rule, every event is repetitious — there is
very little that is new in the world and very few situations that have
not occurred before. I am obviously reminded of the Roman general
who on conquering Carthage said, "We have a victory but it is a des-
ert." But that is a military comment.
I wonder if you saw any historical analogy to where we are today
in the past cycles of history as Toynbee pointed out we are in the
19th.
Mr. Schlesinger. I am rather distrustful of historical analogy. I
do think, though, it can be said that powers can develop illusions of
growing strength and over-reach themselves and get into trouble-
Then if they have any vitality and sobriety, they learn from that and
moderate their ambitions.
I think the process of declination, so to speak, from being a super
power to being just another power is a difficult one. It is one the
British had to go through after the Second World War. It is one that
countries that lost great ware like Germany, Italy and Japan have had
to go through. It is one which we must go through, more on the British
model than on the other. We must understand that the pretentions
that have animated our foreign policy do not correspond to the reali-
ties of either our wisdom or our power, and we must divest ourselves
of self-righteousness in our rhetoric and in our attitude toward the
world.
CONTRIBUTION OF COMMITTEE
The process is painful; and I think this committee has contributed
to the criticism and reevaluation of American power and its purposes.
Senator Pell. I agree with you. It is our chairman and his hearings
which really provided the backdrop after the abdication of President
Johnson to make "peace" a good word and also "appeasement," which
was not a good word when the chairman first organized these hearings.
HAS U.S. POLICY CHANGED WITHOUT REALIZING IT?
I am wondering if you have any thought as to the reasons for the
turn in our policy that we have not perceived in our Nation, but which
certainly has taken place — now our empathy is automatically extended
to those nations who are conservative or militaristic and opposed to
those who are liberal, revolutionary or civilian. I just used the analogy
of various aid programs now where the various tax dollars are going
when we recognize a new country. I think we have changed our policy
without realizing it. I was wondering, one, whether either of you
gentlemen would agree with that statement and, two, what your view
is with regard to the correctness from the viewpoint of our national
interest.
Mr. Chomsky. Consistent with what I said before, I do not think
we changed our policy. I think we are just continuing it. For example,
Senator Church's subcommittee recently explored the situation in
122
Brazil, and discovered that our aid to Brazil shot up very rapidly
after the 1064 coup, -revolution" it is called there, which opened Bra-
zil to foreign investment, which also shot up rapidly. And as the AID
director testified, it was primarily for the benefit of providing a fav-
orable climate for investments, that the United States spent $2 billion
in aid to protect an investment of $1.7 billion. There are many in-
stances, it is well to remember, where the United States has parried
out policies like those in Vietnam but it has won. We entered Vietnam
in a serious way in the late forties. That was right after the experience
of Greece where counter-insurgency had succeeded in putting down a
mass based indigenous movement rather like the Vietnam situation in
xt?'
many respects.
In Korea, in 1945, though the situation was not entirely analogous it
is close enough to be significant. When the American soldiers landed in
Korea in 1945 they found a functioning Korean Government with
Communist participation and much leadership as in every country
where there had been a resistance. It took 5 years to dismantle that gov-
ernment, to wipe out the labor unions, to institute the regime of Syng-
man Ehee. which is in some ways like that of Diem, a right wing na-
tionalist reaime. not like General Thieu but like Diem. The American
policy was a success, incidentally. It turned the struggle into a regional
conflict as was attempted somewhat later in Indochina.
One could go on to list other cases where it seems to me essentially
the same policy is acting itself out. We are trying to protect the "open-
ness" of the society and protect these groups that will maximally offer
us free access, using aid, counter-insurgency, every possible means that
is open to us. Sometimes we overreach as in Vietnam in 1965, where it
no longer seems that we can crush the mass force as we succeeded in
Greece.
Senator Pell. But as a rule, do you not agree if we give them the
choice between giving aid to a more conservative or more liberal gov-
ernment at this time, we tend to give the aid to the more conservative
government as a nation, and my point is our Government policy has
changed without our people realizing it.
Mr. Chomsky. I do not really see that.
Senator Pell. You do not ?
Mr. Chomsky. Xo.
Senator Pell, Greece, Brazil.
Mr. Chomsky. These are countries — we would be delighted to have
them run free elections. I do not think it would make us stop sending
aid as long as they keep the investment climate open.
Mr. Schlesixger. May I comment on this ?
Senator Pell. Yes.
Mr. SciiLESixGErc. I do not think there is any transcendent necessity
that compels us to distinguish between right and leftwing governments
and I do not think historically we have done so. It must be remembered
during the height of the cold war we found ourselves in a very strin-
gent situation with a lot of terrible regimes on our side; but nonethe-
less during the Truman administration we had the friendliest possible
reiations with the democratic socialist regimes of Western Europe.
With the Kennedy administration the whole point of the Alliance for
Progress was an' effort to strengthen democratic governments and
123
parties in Latin America. In both those cases there were strong forces
to the right of the governments which we preferred. I remember par-
ticularly the wailing and complaint from American business about
how the Alliance for Progress was supporting people that they did not
feel were interested in creating the investment climate of which Mr.
Chomsky spoke.
So I think these things depend upon the character and purposes
of the Administration and in the context of the times.
Senator Pell. Thank you.
MEETING OF HISTORL\NS TO EXAMINE CAUSES OF COLD WAR
One final question, request for comment really, I noticed in the press
over the weekend there was a meeting of historians under your
auspices and that in examining the causes of the Vietnam War
Mr. Schlesinger. The cold war.
Senator Pell. I am sorry, the cold war. I was wondering if you
could capsulize the opinion of that group of scholars.
Mr. Schlesinger. I do not think there was any consensus. It was a
group consisting of both former Government officials and historians.
A number of the historians were revisionists. To make a very quick
summary, I think that the revisionists had a certain impact on the
others by making it necessary to see much more systematically than
we have in the past how the situation looked from the point of view
of the Soviet Union. When one does that it is possible to see that
acts which each side undertook on what it considered defensive
grounds were perceived by the other as intolerably offensive and
threatening, and that it was that kind of misconception and mis-
perception that played a large role in the transforming what had
been a conflict of struggle among nations into a holy war. _
On the other hand, I think the revisionist economic thesis — that,
for example, we undertook the cold war in order to get investment
opportunities in Eastern Europe — is something for which they pro-
vided no evidence and which was generally rejected.
Senator Pell. Thank you.
Thank you. Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Senator from New York.
Senator Javtts. Thank you.
is n.s. really pulling out of war?
Mr. Schlesinger, based upon yours and Professor Chomsky's knowl-
edge and views of history, do you think there is anything to the
theory that the President is now engaged in some ploy on a global
basis,' that all of this really is action for the public to digest, and
that behind the scenes we are really pulling out of the Vietnam War?
And we who feel so strongly about his pulling out are prevailing,
although we do not know it?
Mr. Schlesinger. Well, I think anything is possible. It may be
possible, as I mentioned earlier, that the belligerence of the speech
was a cover-up for a cave-in. I wish I could really believe that. We
will know soon enough. It seems a possibility; but, given the tone of
the speech and its general continuity with President Nixon's attitude
on other occasions, it seems to me a possibility but not a probability.
83-605 — 73 9
124
Senator Javits. What do you think, Professor Chomsky?
Mr. Chomsky. I agree. I would be delighted if it were true and I
eagerly await some evidence for it but I do not see very much. In
particular, Kissinger's press conference yesterday seems to me to make
it most improbable.
Senator Javits. I must say, gentlemen, that I agree with you. I
think all of this is speculation which can only paralyze such action
of which we are capable. I feel, and I would certainly welcome any
comment from you, that great nations cannot bluff. If they try it
they can get in terrible trouble, do you agree with that ?
Mr. Schlesinger. I would agree with that. What was it Theodore
Eoosevelt said ? — never bluff unless you are ready to shoot.
WHAT CAN CONGRESS DO?
Senator Javits. One other thing I would like to ask you, as I was
not here when you may have developed it and you both know my deep
interest, of the role that Congress can play.
It has always seemed to me if the war powers bill were law we
would have even in this situation a position if an extension of the
present struggle was so great as to constitute a new order of hostilities ;
i.e., an invasion of the north, for example, and that may still be. If we
had the bill on the books a very strong case could be made that the
mining of Haiphong Harbor is really new, a new war, but in the
absence of this law, and considering the fact that climatically, as you
have said, Professor Schlesinger, the war powers bill does not seem
to have convinced the President that he had better pay some attention
to its procedural philosophy now even though.it is not the law. Do
you feel that, and again in light of historical experience and prece-
dent, that the fund cut-off route is the only route open to us, except, as
you said, an appeal to the country or in the election campaign? But
from the point of view of the Congress, is there anything else that
either of you can see, other than the fund cut-off route, absent some
generic law like the war powers bill or some adaptation ol it?
Mr. Schlesinger. I do not know what happens when members of
this body are invited to the White House for a briefing.
The Chairman. They are not. [Laughter.]
Mr. Schlesinger. I do not know what would happen if a deputa-
tion of this committee of senior Senators requested a meeting of
the President and said in the most urgent and sombre way you are
concerned about these matters.
The Chairman. Will the Senator yield ? I will explain that remark.
The day before yesterday at the Democratic caucus the leadership
voted unanimously to instruct the majority leader to ask the relevant
chairman and ranking members of the committees and the minority
leader. Senator Scott joined, to send a letter requesting a meeting with
the President. That meeting did not take place until immediately
before the broadcast. There was absolutely no consultation, none
whatsoever.
Senator Javits. You know, if the President will not see us, no mat-
ter how eminent our delegation, we will have to find some way of
dealing with that, but give us your opinion as to what you see we
125
can do, even though, as our chairman properly says, perhaps we tried
it and it has not worked but, nonetheless, the full catalog of what
you see we can do could be very valuable to us.
Mr. Chomsky. Well, look, I think there are a lot of things that
Senators can do, up to civil disobedience, for that matter.
president's appeal for unity
I think the President appealed in his speech for unity of the
American people. That is necessary for the bluff he is trying to carry
off and incidentally, I am not sure it is a bluff. I mean, 1 do not know
what he will do if Russian ships start loading and unloading 2 miles
away from Haiphong on the beach. I think you have to show him
that unity is not there but there is a real commitment to stop it, and
that kind of commitment can be shown in many ways. If that com-
mitment is not shown I do not think he is going to pay any attention
to congressional resolutions.
'to'
president's disregard of legislation
In fact, I was interested to notice that Chairman Fulbright pointed
out on the floor of the Senate back on October 3rd or 4th, I think, and
Senator Symington agreed, as I recall, that one might actually raise
the question of whether there was any point in being a Senator of the
United States if the President is simply going to disregard explicit
legislation. The context at that time was the bringing of Thai mer-
cenaries to Laos. After a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Com-
mittee, which I found most astonishing, in which Alexis Johnson
testified that the Government interpreted the law limiting forces there
to local Lao forces, he interpreted the law as permitting Australians,
Cambodians, Thais, anybody they could bring in. They were all local
Lao forces. I think it is a small incident but a revealing one. It means
that unless there will be some kind of demonstration, and I do not
know what kind to suggest, a real commitment to insist upon the ob-
servance of congressional legislation, and to respond to the popular
will as reflected in Congress or, for that matter, outside, then the coun-
try will continue to go through what in a sense amounts to a series of
executive coups, rejection of popular opinion, of congressional opinion,
even of explicit legislation in certain cases.
PROPOSITION THAT 7 0 PERCENT OF COUNTRY BACKS PRESIDENT'S ACTION
Senator Javits. What do you say, Professor Schlesinger, I would
like to have you answer that in just a remark, if you will, what do you
say to the proposition that is always waved at us that 70 percent of the
country backs the President's action ?
Mr. Schlesinger. Well, I doubt very much that is so and even if it
is so it should not restrain those who disagree from expressing dis-
agreement. There is an automatic tendency when the President under-
takes a new military venture to rally around the flag for a moment :
but my own guess is the American people are fed up with this war.
They might have believed President Nixon when he said invasion of
Cambodia would have a decisive effect or when he said that American
126
aerial support for the South Vietnamese invasion of Laos might have
a decisive effect or even when he said the resumption of the bombing of
North Vietnam would have a decisive effect; but after a time they are
bound to recognize the futility of escalation. I think Ray Clapper was
right when he said : Never underestimate the intelligence of the Ameri-
can people or overestimate the amount of information they have.
President Nixon does not command the confidence of the American
people in such a way as to have his every view automatically accepted.
I think the Senators who have shown themselves far more right than
the Executive on this question of Vietnam also have strong constituen-
cies over the country and can make a counterveiling effort. Maybe a
group of you should go on television.
WHAT ELSE CAN CONGRESS DO?
Senator Javtts. We have gotten a little away from the subject. You
both agree that one thing members can do is to utilize their prestige for
public declaration in one form or another. What else can we do ? The
funds cut-off I have named, what else, is there anything else that you
can suggest?
Mr. Chomsky. Personally I would be strongly in favor of a move
for impeachment knowing that it cannot succeed, simply because it
would somehow symbolize the intensity of the commitment to avoid a
nuclear war, let us say, or other steps that are threatening.
Mr. Schlesinger. A large vote against impeachment would be in-
terpreted as an endorsement of the President and support of his
actions.
Mr. Chomsky. That depends on how it is done. Let us not deceive
the population of the country about the strength of antiwar sentiment.
One should be direct about it. There is a certain degree of power in the
Senate. It is true that a strong Executive can always for a very brief
period rally popular support in what will appear to be moments of
peril and danger and so on. But I think the credibility of this adminis-
tration and earlier ones has sunk to the point where this is very brief,
very transitory, and the powers of the Senate are probably greater
than one realizes at this stage.
Senator Javits. Well, I believe the powers of impeachment are
powers that are not to be utilized in the event of differences of view on
national policy no matter how deep. Remember that you are historians,
and although we may disagree with the President's policy, it is a
deeply held view of policy by him.
He is up for election this fall. So I frankly doubt very much that
there is anything to the impeachment remedy or that it is even in
order, and notwithstanding the depth of our disagreement. I just
do not think that impeachment is in the ball park of American political
life and tradition. Impeachment is for other things, high crimes and
misdemeanors, tyranny and so on, and many may define it as such,
but I am sorry, I cannot. I still think, no matter how deep, it is a very
profound difference as to what ought to be the policy of our country.
It could be gravely jeopardizing to our country, but then there were
those who wanted to impeach FDR when he gave the British the de-
stroyers on the same claim of authority, so if we are going to jump
127
to impeachment every time we do have this basic difference, I think
impeachment will be held awfully cheap.
Mr. Chomsky. I do not agree, and the reason is that the present
acts are very different from giving destroyers. I think there are very
good strong grounds, which Congress or someone should pursue, for
believing that very serious crimes, violation of American and inter-
national law, have been committed and continually are being com-
mitted. I do not see, for example, how the destruction of northern
Laos under the Nixon-Kissinger administration in secret — largely
brought out by subcommittees of this committee — how it could be
interpreted as anything other than a violation of treaties to which we
are a party of the supreme law of the land, and I think the continued
escalation of the war also falls in this category.
JUSTICE DEPARTMENT CHOICE IN" PENTAGON" PAPERS CASE
Xow. unfortunately, take the case of the Pentagon Papers as a strik-
ing example. The Justice Department had a choice: it might have
gone ahead, as it did. to try to prosecute the release of the papers,
or it had an alternative, to try to investigate the possible criminal
conspiracy to engage the country in an aggressive war that is revealed
by the papers.
Now it is very striking that in the case of information that was
released giving evidence — we can debate its sufficiency but not its
existence — but giving some evidence of really criminal acts, the Jus-
tice Department proceeded not to investigate and perhaps prosecute
the criminal acts, let alone terminate them, but to prosecute the release
of those facts to the public. This is a case where the system really has
failed. I mean, elearh* the Justice Department will protect the inheri-
tors of policies rather than try to prevent, to prosecute possible crimi-
nal acts that were conducted by them. Here I think another forum
is needed, a forum to investigate the question whether the American
intervention in Vietnam since 1960, certainly since 1965, and certainly
now is not, strictly speaking, criminal.
HAS SYSTEM BROKEN DOWN AND FAILED?
Senator Javits. Professor Chomsky, I do not want to take your
wonderful mind off our alternatives, but if you will allow me to just
add something to what you just said about the Pentagon Papers. Is
it not a fact in sustaining our svstem that the Department is not the
last word? Sure, you can indict, you can sue but, so long as there
are courts who will redress it, you cannot say the system has broken
down and failed.
Mr. Chomsky. >7o. I am sorry, I would say the system has broken
down and failed at this point and I do not see the remedy. The sys-
tem has broken down because of the selective prosecution. You see. the
Government may lose the case, as it lost the Harrisburg conspiracy
case, as it failed in its effort at prior restraint of the Times, but it is
not prosecuting or investigating or indicting, let alone cloto-Tino; those
who may be guilty of the crimes revealed in the Pentagon Papers.
Senator Javtts. There is going to be an election this fall and if the
people want another Attorney General and another approach they will
have the opportunity to do that.
128
Mr. Chomsky. But that is not the way crimes are supposed to be
treated.
Senator Javits. Well
Mr. Chomsky. And furthermore, a second point in connection with
that is not only is the Government failing to investigate, let alone
prosecute, the real crimes, the substantive crimes, but furthermore,
it is important to remember that the power of the Government to in-
dict, to subpena, to try, constitutes punishment. I know this myself.
I have been involved with the Pentagon Papers grand jury in an effort,
so far successful to refuse to testify before the grand jury because I
think the investigation is improper, for the reason I just mentioned.
Well, so far the courts have worked for me. I have been excused from
testifying on grounds of wiretapping and so forth. I have also been
punished. I have been punished to the tune of several thousand dollars
and a great deal of time and energy, and the same thing was true, far
more so, of the Harrisburg Seven. The Government lost, but the Har-
risburg Seven lost much more severely. They do not have the resources,
their supporters do not have the time, and the same thing will be true
in the case of the Pentagon Papers. So in two respects the system has
failed badly; one, failure to prosecute substantive crimes and. two,
prosecution which appears to fail but nevertheless punishes individ-
uals.
Senator Javtts. Professor Chomsky, of course, the obvious answer
to you is. "what is your system ?"
Mr. Chomsky. Well, of course. I do not have an answer to that ex-
cept to say that here is a case where the Congress could try to con-
struct a different kind of forum in which the possibly criminal acts of
the Executive can in fact be investigated with some authority, not
with the authority to prosecute — Congress does not have the power —
but to enlighten.
INFORMATION ISSUE
Let me. just to complete this, say that the matter of information
which I think you mentioned, or Professor Schlesinger mentioned, is
very important now. There are secret studies which do not by any
stretch of the imagination have anything to do with the national de-
fense, which probably would shed a great deal of light on the possible
criminal acts of the Executive and the nature of the war. For example,
there is a Rand Motivation and Morale Study, sections of which actu-
ally were introduced by Secretary McNamara into congressional tes-
timony back in 1966, which were very revealing. They imply, I believe,
a conscious effort to force population removal, for example. This study
is alleged to be very large, very extensive. It deals with the attitudes
of Vietnamese peasants and defectors back in the late sixties. How can
that have anything to do with national defense? It could have a lot to
do with determining what went on in that war and why, and I think
probably if one looked beyond you could find many cases of this sort,
and somehow Congress ought to try to find a way to make that kind
of information public.
Senator Javits. Professor Chomsky, we are trying to deal with the
information issue, if you have been watching the Senate's proceedings.
Our own committee has been a real loader. My time is up but I just
129
wanted to ask you to complete any other suggestion you have for us,
any other thing that you think, any other alternative we could have
other than those already outlined.
Mr. Schlesinger. I do not think there is any gimmick.
Senator Javits. No, anything.
AWAKEXING PEOPLE TO WHAT HAS BEEN GOING ON
Mr. Schlesinger. I think democracy is essentially a process of po-
litical education and in the end you can do things only that the
majority of the people are persuaded ought to be done. The com-
mittee has done an extraordinary job in these hearings in awakening
the people to what has been going on in Vietnam. I believe they ought
to do everything they can in the way of scattering around the coun-
try making speeches about the situation. In the end the people have to
decide.
Senator Javits. Professor Chomsky, do you wish to add anything ?
Mr. Chomsky. I also do not know a gimmick. I think the Senators
have to go to the people. They have to try to set up forums. I think
a senatorial filibuster might be a reasonable act, again as a symbolic
act. I think one has to find methods of expressing a firm commitment
and serving as a rallying point for the popular movement of opposi-
tion to the war which is unfocused, leaderless largely, and which
should have many centers of leadership, many places with which it
can associate. I think somehow that is the job of political leadership.
Now. I just do not know specifically what this means.
Senator Javits. Thank you.
Thank vou, Mr. Chairman.
ACCESS TO PUBLIC MIND
The Chairman. Just a comment or two. Professor Schlesinger,
you reminded me of this question of access to the public mind. The
use of television as it is used now by the Presidential office is an
obstacle that is almost impossible for Congress to overcome. I intro-
duced a bill on this ; it got nowhere. But how can all of us, if we do
anything here in our regular duties, compete with this kind of access
to the minds of the American people when the President can go on,
as he did the other night, and I suppose practically everyone who
has a television set sees him because it occupies the whole spectrum.
It is a technological development which seems to me to contribute to
the undermining of the congressional power or influence or educating
the mind. There is hardly any way that you can compete that I know
of. Individual Senators can never command that kind of attention.
Mr. Chomsky. Can Congress pass appropriations to permit Con-
gressmen to buy time ?
The Chairman. As I say, I tried to introduce a bill but the process
has gone so far that it is very difficult, if not impossible, to reverse
it. There has been nothing but a negative response to that effort,
which was to provide some form of equal time.
I have one or two things I want to put into the record. Mr. Reporter,
and because I think it is relevant to the questions asked by the Senator
from Illinois, I want to include a quote from the memoirs of Charles
130
de Gaulle which bears exactly on this question that you were dis-
cussing. We are all familiar with it, but it ought to be in the record —
De Gaulle's advice to John Kennedy _ about Vietnam. It is a very
striking thing, as he always expresses it in very
Mr. Schlesinger. I might add that I have read the American
minutes of that meeting. I do not recall General de Gaulle being quite
as explicit about Vietnam as his own memory is ; I think he improved
his memory of the conversation.
The Chairman. Substantively or only as to style ?
Mr. Schlesinger. Substantively; it is much sharper there than I
recall it, but I would hope the Senate Foreign Kelations Committee
might itself soon get access to the minutes of that meeting and
check it.
The Chairman. I would hope so, too, but the prospects are not very
good.
Anyway, this is a historical document and it is a quote from his
memoirs.
(The information referred to follows :)
Charles de Gaulle on Vietnam
(Extension of remarks of Hon. Andrew Jacobs, Jr., of Indiana, in the House
of Representatives, Monday, May 8, 1972)
Mr. JACOBS. Mr. Speaker, the following is a quotation from Charles de
Gaulle as it appeared in his "Memoirs of Hope."
"In South Vietnam, after having encouraged the seizure of dictatorial power
by Ngo Dinh Diem and hastened the departure of the French advisers, they were
beginning to install the first elements of an expeditionary corps under cover of
economic aid. John Kennedy gave me to understand that the American aim was
to establish a bulwark against the Soviets in the Indochinese peninsula. But
instead of giving him the approval he wanted, I told the president that he was
taking the wrong road.
" 'You will find,' I said to him, 'that intervention in this area will be an endless
entanglement. Once a nation has been aroused, no foreign power, however strong,
can impose its will upon it. You will discover this for yourselves. For even if
you find local leaders who in their own interests are prepared to obey you,
the people will not agree to it, and indeed do not want you. The ideology which
you invoke will make no difference. Indeed, in the eyes of the masses it will
become identified with your will to power. That is why the more you become in-
volved out here against communism, the more the communists will appear as the
champions of national independence, and the more support they will receive, if
only from despair. We French have had experience of it. You Americans wanted
to take our place in Indochina. Now you want to take over where we left off
and revive a war that we brought to an end. I predict that you will sink step by
step into a bottomless military and political quagmire, however much you spend
in men and money. What you, we and others ought to do for unhappy Asia is
not to take over the running of these states ourselves, but to provide them with the
means to escape from the misery and humiliation that, there as elsewhere, are the
causes of totalitarian regimes. I tell you this in the name of the West.' "
WHY HO CHI MINH's LETTERS WERE NOT ACKNOWLEDGED
The Chairman. One or two little odds and ends I wanted to ask 3^011
before I yield again.
There is one great puzzle to me, and 3^011 both have studied this matter
and particularly the Pentagon Papers — it has always been a great mys-
tery to me as to why the eight letters Ho Chi Minh wrote got no
response whatever; no acknowledgement was made. I had not heard
131
about the letters until the Pentagon Papers. Are you familiar with
that incident and do you have any explanation of why at that early
date Secretary Acheson, I assume, was completely indifferent to Ho's
pleas of assistance ? You recall he would like to be treated as we did
the Philippines. Can either of you throw any light at all on the mood
of that time as to why we were so indifferent to them ?
Mr. Sciilesinger. My guess is the letters were sent over to the French
desk on the ground that this was an internal problem of France;
and the people on the French desk thought if we replied to them it
would be intervention in internal French affairs. My experience with
bureaucracy would be to think that is the way it went.
Mr. Chomsky. I would suggest a different reason. After all, there
was a period when Ho Chi Minh was recognized even by France as
running the government of Vietnam and there was certainly reason
to answer his letters; but as Dean Acheson said Ho Chi Minh was a
Communist and everything else is irrelevant.
The Chairman. He gave that as a later
Mr. Chomsky. In 1949, but it was the same policy then. It didn't
make any difference whether some political leadership was democratic,
popular, nationalist, independent, whether it was friendly to the
United States, anything, as long as it was going to construct what we
call a Communist regime, as long as there were alternatives which
might, exactly as thePentagon Papers report, not out of context but
consistently, year by year, open up these areas to the western indus-
trial societies and Japan and help us to preserve Japan in the western
orbit and help us to preserve the position of France, within the U.S.-
controlled global system. We were trying at that point to make sure
that so-called Communist forces in Western Europe didn't gain too
much ascendancy ; as long as that was the case we were not going to
jeopardize the expansion of western power.
The Chairman. Would this same answer apply to the report of the
Dixie Mission which includes, of course, the John S. Service report
of overtures from the Chinese Communists in 1944 which has now
been widely circulated ? All of this came to the attention of the chair-
man of this committee only recently — do you think the Administration
was aware of this but took the decision on the grounds you just said?
Mr. Chomsky. Well, all we can say since the internal records are
not available in other cases is that the decisions were taken with amaz-
ing consistency. They were taken in Greece, Korea, China, and Central
America, in Vietnam, always with the same criterion applying. In
the case of the Pentagon Papers, we know it was pretty much con-
scious ; there is enough evidence to support that.
The Chairman. Do you agree ?
Mr. Sciilesinger. There is no evidence to suggest that the interests
of expanding American capitalism accounted for^ the decisions in
Europe, There were other grounds to oppose Stalinism.
Mr. Chomsky. We were not opposing Stalinism in Greece.
Mr. Schlesinger. There were grounds by western democrats.
JOHN S. SERVICE REPORT
The Chairman. I am curious about that. The Service report of 1944
was, as you know, rather well publicized in the Government, in that
132
lie sent it when the Ambassador, Patrick Hurley, was back here. He
infuriated Hurley, but I would assume that also sort of insures its
having been brought to the attention of the Administration.
Is your analysis of why they did not respond there, as I recall it,
John Sendee reported that Mao made very broad offers of investment
and so on and assistance, industrial help and so forth, and this, too,
was unavailable.
Mr. Chomsky. But not like those of Chiang Kai-shek. There was
very good reason to oppose Stalinism ; in fact, I opposed it then and
now. But we were not opposing Stalinism in Greece ; or in China. On
the contrary, Stalin was opposed to the Greek guerrillas and to Mao ;
nor did we oppose Stalinism in Latin America or elsewhere. Yet in all
of these cases the U.S. tried to destroy, and in most cases succeeded in
destroying, popular movements which threatened to extricate their
societies from the international global systems.
Mr. Schlesinger. Mr. Chairman, Mr. Chomsky has evidently for-
gotten that as late as 1947 the policy of the American Government was
to establish a coalition government in China between the Communists
and the Nationalists and that the most eminent living American of
that period, General Marshall, was sent out to carry through that
policy. This notion that because of the interests of American capital-
ism we were embarked on an effort to destroy Chinese Communism
simply does not accord with well known historical fact.
Mr. Chomsky. Well, I am afraid that is not true. We began in 1945
to ferry
Mr. Schi/esistger. You mean it was not true about General Marshall ?
Mr. Chomsky. Yes.
Mr. Schlesinger. How is it consistent with your previous statement ?
Mr. Chomsky. It is very consistent with the general thesis that we
will always support that group in a society, that political possibility
in a society which, of course, has some chance of success and will make
more easy our entry into the society. So, in 1945, we ferried Chiang's
troops all over the place and American Marines and others were in-
volved in supporting him. When it became obvious he was not going
to obtain the kind of victory we hoped for, we tried to support the
kind of coalition that offered us maximal entry into China ; and when
that failed we just supported Chiang-Kai-shek openly despite the
popular support for Maoist China, which was not part of the Stalin-
ist bloc at that time.
The Chairman. I don't know: this is my own personal curiosity
and I am not sure that it promotes the regular purpose of the com-
mittee, but it has been a tremendous puzzle to me, really, how this has
worked. There is a certain consistency in your theory, but I am in-
clined to think it isn't quite that simple ; there are these other highly
emotional matters. I think when you consider the emotion that
attended the hearings during the McCarthy period, and I don't
want to rehash that, but this is a phenomenon that I must say puzzles
me tremendously. I don't understand it at all when I read this. I am
sure it seems peculiar to you that the Foreign Relations Committee
and its chairman were so ignorant of all of these papers and what
took place here. I have often wondered what would have happened
had we had Mr. Service as a witness, as you are this morning, say, in
133
1946 or 1947. Of course, no such thing took place and that knowledge
was kept closely within the Department of State so far as I know.
I was not on the committee during that period. I certainly was un-
aware of the report at that time.
CONCEPT OF NEUTRALISM FOR SOUTHEAST ASIA
Let me end by this question :
There was in one of your statements a reference to neutralism. The
committee had a study made by some historians — some years ago on
the relevance of the concept of neutralism for Southeast Asia, par-
ticularly for Indochina.
Would neutralism, be one aspect which has a settlement ? You said,
"The President in March 1964, had warned Ambassador Lodge 'to
knock . . . down the idea of neutralization wherever it rears its ugly
head' " — that is a quote from, I gather, a Presidential cable. "Xeu-
tralism, as Ambassador Taylor noted, 'appeared to mean throwing the
internal political situation open and thus inviting Communist partic-
ipation,' for obvious reasons an intolerable prospect."
Of course, neutralism has been used often in other cases, particu-
larly cases where great powers have come together in other insoluble
situations and this seems to me might be mutually acceptable to the
Chinese and Americans and others.
Could either of you comment on why is it so objectionable or
whether you think it is an idea that could be usefully applied to the
situation in Vietnam ?
Mr. Schlesinger. I have always believed that neutralization was
the best solution for that area. I thought President Kennedy pursued
the correct policy in trying to bring about neutralization of Laos. I
wish that that policy had been extended to Vietnam.
Mr. Chomsky. Let me just say I don't agree with your interpreta-
tion of what happened in the Kennedy period. Kennedy was driven
to the acceptance of an earlier Russian proposal for the neutralization
of Laos because of the collapse of the efforts to support the extreme
rightwing forces there.
The reason why neutralism was not accepted in South Vietnam was
expressed very clearly, for example, by intelligence, by Ambassador
Taylor, by many others whom I have quoted. Namely; neutralism
would mean that a solution would arise on the basis of political
strength which would mean, it was assumed, that the Communists
would win.
In a broader context it is often forgotten, in fact, it has almost been
kept from the public record, that in 1962 the National Liberation
Front proposed neutralization of South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia
as its official program.
The Chairman. When was this ?
Mr. Chomsky. 1962; that is the official program of the National
Liberation Front. We may perhaps question whether they meant it but
anyway it is their official program.
You will search very hard to find a record of that in discussions
of 1962 of these events. Yet, it was known and it was discussed, for
example, by the French experts, and. in fact, most of the people who
were close to the Vietnamese, much closer than American intelligence
,, 1....VU v.^^x «.»" ^n^i^.x* ...^^fev
134
or even American reporters, people like Benard Fall, people like Jean
Claude Pomonti who has lived there for 20 years ; people like George
Chaffard and Jean Lacouture — all of them have pointed out to the
United States the separatism of the NLF and, in fact, it was expressed
in the 1962 program; and, for what it is worth, I might mention that
Pham Van Dong repeated those words exactly to me in 19 TO when I
was in Hanoi.
One may say that they don't mean it or something like that, but
that kind of proposal has always been offered ; it has been kept secret
in the United States or it has been rejected for the reasons I have
discussed already at length.
The Chairman. This attitude has some bearing on neutralism, but
our very friendly and extensive assistance to Communist countries
like Yugoslavia, President Tito — how we can accept that and have such
an intolerably hard line in Vietnam is a psychological puzzle that has
always been difficult for me to deal with, and as I have already men-
tioned, there is Cuba.
Mr. Chomsky. I think Acheson answered that. He said that Titoism
was a likely outcome in Indochina and Acheson pointed out in one
place — I am sorry I don't have the reference in mind — that we might
accept this as an absolutely last resort — if everything else failed we
might accept a Titoist regime — and the reasons, I believe, are the
ones I have already expressed.
COMMENDATION OF WITNESSES
The Chairman. I appreciate very much what you gentlemen have
contributed to these hearings. Your papers are extraordinarily well
done, thoughtful, and I think the discussion has been very good.
I yield to the Senator from Illinois. I am going to have to leave in
a moment. I have a luncheon with the minority leader and I can't
ignore that.
There will be inserted in the record at this point, from the Congres-
sional Record of July 27, 1970, an excerpt of an interview of Presi-
dent Xixon by Mr. John Chancellor.
(The information referred to follows:)
TV Interview With President Nixon of July 1, 1970
(Reprinted in Congressional Record, July 27, 1970)
Mr. Chancellor. . .
Do you feel that in the modern world there are situations when the President
must respond against the very tight deadline or for reasons of security in using
American troops crossing a border with them when he cannot, under reasons you
yourself have described, consult with the Legislative Branch ?
The Constitution says they declare war and you, sir, run it.
The President. Another good example of course is the Cuban missile crisis.
President Kennedy had a very difficult decision there and 2 hours and a
quarter before he ordered — and I thought with great justification and great
courage — before he ordered the blockade, the use of American men to blockade
Cuba, he told the Senate and the Congressional leaders. Now why didn't he give
them more time? For a very good reason he did not give them more time.
It was imperative to move soon with some surprise and some impact or the
possibility of a nuclear confrontation might have been greater. That is one
example. I trust we don't have another situation like Cambodia, but I do know
that in the modern world, there are times when the Commander-in-Chief, the Pres-
135
ident of the United States, will have to act quickly. I can assure the American
people that this President is going to bend over backwards to consult the Senate
and consult the House whenever he feels it can be done without jeopardizing the
lives of American men.
But when it is a question of the lives of American men or the attitudes of peo-
ple in the Senate, I am coming down hard on the side of defending the lives of
American men.
DECISIONMAKING PROCESS IN 1961
Senator Percy. I would like to go back to 1961 to better try to under-
stand what happened and what the decisionmaking processes were.
The authors of the Pentagon Papers concluded on the basis of Gen-
eral Taylor's report of October 1961, that it was the Americans who
proposed the idea to the South Vietnamese for involving American
troops in combat.
Was this questioned or opposed by anyone in the Government at the
time ?
Mr. Schlesinger. The question of sending American troops to Viet-
nam ?
Senator Percy. Eight, and it was really the Americans who were
pressing this idea for sending troops?
Mr. Schlesinger. Yes; I read that in the Pentagon Papers. As I
said, I was not involved in Southeast Asian affairs and did not remem-
ber it at that time. I have recorded Kennedy's remarks to me after the
Taylor-Eostow report in which he said, "If they were to send in Amer-
ican troops, they will come in and there will be great applause and
after 3 days will have been forgotten. It is like taking a drink and after
a while you have to take another." He took more drinks, unfortunately,
but that was all I can record or have recorded about his reaction.
estimate op length and cost of commitment
Senator Percy. After the decision was made to send forces out there,
was there any discussion that you recall whether this would be a long-
term commitment, as to how long our commitment would be, what the
ultimate cost would be %
Mr. Schlesinger. There was none.
Senator Percy. How we saw the end of it ?
Mr. Schlesinger. Indeed the impression was this would be a very
short commitment because of the preponderance of forces on the side
of the Saigon Government was so great. As I say, our intelligence
estimate was the total number of Viet Cong at the end of 1961 was
about 15,000 and it was thought this was manageable.
The Pentagon Papers do tell at considerable length about the Mc-
Namara planfor the phasing out of American forces, a plan which was
developed, as I recall, at the end of 1962 and which implied total with-
drawal of American forces sometime in 1964, 1965. I think that was
the estimate. It was based on ignorant and mistaken analysis, but it
showed that our original intensions were limited.
tj.s. intelligence estimates
Senator Percy. We grossly miscalculated the resilience and strength
of the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese support a decade ago, and
136
this apparently has happened again in the last few days — the South
Vietnam ambassador told me he didn't know where all these tanks
came from. After all these years and the hundreds of millions of dol-
lars spent on intelligence and concentrating our whole attention in
that small area of the world, not directly related to our own national
interest, why is it we still don't have adequate intelligence about it ?
Mr. Schlesinger. In justice to the CIA, I think that the national
intelligence estimates of the CIA, particularly in the fifties, and the
estimates from the intelligence bureau of the State Department in the
early sixties were not bad. I understand that the CIA, for example,
according to the newspapers, only recently argued that the mining
of Haiphong was not going to have miraculous effect.
On the other hand, every President is surrounded by a welter of
conflicting advice and can select the advice that his temperament and
intelligence and judgment require, however, there is an inherently
distorting process in the structure of government which brings to Pres-
idents the intelligence their subordinates want them to hear. There is
an extraordinary capacity to reenact past folly. There is the general
comfort of the bureaucracy when it is doing the same old. thing rather
than doing new things.
It would seem to me in any number of cases our operational intelli-
gence failure was so great that it should have called for a vast up-
heaval. When you think of how many generals Lincoln went through
before he found one to win the Civil War, and when you think of
the way we have kept on generals of tested military imbecility in com-
mand, and then promoted them, Lincoln wouldn't have kept those
generals two minutes. But Presidents Johnson and Nixon seem to be
imprisoned by the generals they appoint.
REACTION OF CHINESE AND SOVEETS
Senator Percy. I assume at the National Security Council's meeting
of 3 hours the other day a great deal of deliberation was given to the
thought of the reaction of the Chinese and the Soviets to our counter-
actions and reactions now.
How much discussion was given at the time we sent U.S. combat
forces to South Vietnam? How much discussion was given to the im-
pact on China and the Soviet Union and their relationship to us?
Mr. Schlesinger. When we sent U.S. combat units, which was in
the spring of 1965, 1 was not in the Government. Our military advisers
were sent to be attached to units of the ARVN. I heard of no such
discussion, but I attended National Security Council meetings only
when they were in something I was working on: so I never attended
Vietnam meetings — I imagine there was some discussion but others
would know better than I.
BACKUP SUPPORT PROVIDED NORTH VIETNAM
Senator Percy. The report of the Taylor-Rostow mission concen-
trated on the possibilities of the infiltration of supplies from North
Vietnam, the various routes and so forth. However, was thought given
to the backup support that would be provided by Eastern Europe, by
the Soviet Union, by China and the various routes that they could
137
use — sea, rail, air — to bring supplies in ? Was there a full understand-
ing of the backup support that would be provided if we provided
support to South Vietnam?
The Chairman. Will the Senator yield? I just want to say thank
you very much, and you continue.
Senator Percy. I find that at about this hour it is a good time for the
Republicans to seize control here, reading into the record past Repub-
lican platforms and so on.
The Chairman. That is quite all right; it will be to our advantage
to do that.
Mr. Schlesinger. I know of no discussion, but again someone like
McGeorge Bundy or Michael Forrestal were far more intimately in-
volved in this and would know. It must be remembered the apportion-
ment of things was very difficult. As I said, the 15,000 Viet Cong was
the estimate; there were, of course, no regular North Vietnamese
troops in South Vietnam until the summer of 1965, and the problem
of infiltration of arms and men was a very limited, minor problem.
The Taylor-Rostow report did argue the case for northern strategy. I
think they were absolutely wrong in their assumptions that this was
not primarily an indigenous uprising which had been adopted for its
own purposes by the North Vietnamese.
president Kennedy's decision to send combat troops
Senator Percy (presiding). President Kennedy and General Taylor
were personally very close. They had a high regard for each other, and
yet when General Taylor came back from his mission and recom-
mended that U.S. combat forces be sent, this decision was not accepted
as a recommendation by President Kennedy. "When did President
Kennedy actually decide to send combat troops and what happened
to cause him to change his mind?
Mr. Schlesinger. I think we have to distinguish a couple of things
here: First, let me say personal friendship is not necessarily a sign
of policy agreement. In the middle of the late sixties. Robert Kennedy
and Maxwell Taylor used to play tennis a lot but they could not dis-
agree more about what ought to be done in Vietnam.
Senator Percy. But he did send him on a mission out there, not on
tennis or ping pong, but to assess the military situation ?
Mr. Schlesinger. Yes. Kennedy sent General Taylor because Gen-
eral Taylor had been among those who had opposed in 1054 the effort
of Vice President Nixon and others to get American troops committed
to Vietnam.
You said why did Kennedy not accept the recommendation to send
combat troops?
Senator Percy. I am more interested in why he changed his mind
and what happened to cause him to change his mind.
Mr. Schlesinger. Taylor recommended two things : He recommend-
ed sending military advisers which would be attached to the Vietna-
mese Army and Government and he recommended sending a combat
force. We did not send combat units until 1965. Kennedy did accept
the recommendation of sending advisers, so that his resistance was —
and continued — to the notion of sending American combat units.
138
CONSULTATION WITH CONGRESS
Senator Percy. Do you recall any attempt in those days to consult
with Members of Congress on the decision to send combat troops or
on the United States defense treaty with Vietnam ?
Mr. Schlesinger. Well, Chuck, again I am a defective witness be-
cause I was not involved in these things. I was involved in Latin
American affairs and Western European affairs and could talk with
much more knowledge. I overheard, so to speak, when people would
talk to me occasionally about things that were going on; but the
answer to that question is I simply don't know.
CLAIM THAT VIETNAM IS TEST OF U.S. CREDIBILITY
Senator Percy. Is there any foundation to the oft repeated claim
that Vietnam was and continues to be a real test of United States
credibility of U.S. determination to stick by our commitments?
Mr. Schlesinger. If that was a test, we have failed that test abomi-
nably because all we have done by all these years in Vietnam is to show
our incapacity to deal with a guerrilla movement. I think our persist-
ence in error has clone far more to destroy American credibility than
withdrawal would have done. T might acid this whole notion of this
kind of promiscuous test of credibility is wrong. The proposition that
if we pull out of Vietnam, other countries will expect us to pull out
from parts of the world where our direct and vital interests are con-
cerned is not very convincing. The idea that, because we won't carry
out an absurd policy in Vietnam, our adversaries will conclude that
we wouldn't defend Western Europe, for example, makes no sense.
By that argument, after the Soviet Union pulled its missiles out of
Cuba, we could have done anything we wanted to in Eastern Europe.
But it is ridiculous because you have to draw a distinction between
zones of vital in forest and zones that don't promote interest.
No one is going to deduce from our failure to fight to the end in a
hopeless and terrible war in a zone of no vital interest to the United
States, that we will therefore not persist in an area which we consider
vital to us. any more than we would have supposed, as I say, that, be-
cause the Russians pulled out of Cuba, they had lost all interest in
Eastern Europe. This is the fallacy in President Nixon's argument,
Senator Percy. Did any allies at any time specifically raise with us
the issue as to the necessity of our supporting Vietnam to maintain
our credibility with all other allies?
Mr. Schlesinger. Not to my knowledge, but that would have become
an issue after I left the Government, You know the number of troops
we had in Vietnam at the end of 1963 was about 16,800. considerably
less than the number of American troops in Korea, West Germany or
a number of other places. President. Johnson did not mention Vietnam
in his first state of the Union address: in his second state of the Union
address in January 1965 he gave it 100 words.
I think there is a clanger in reading back into earlier periods the
magnitudes of the period after we Americanized the war. I say this
not in defense of the Kennedy administration, because, as I have said
a number of times. I think the Kennedy administration policy in Viet-
nam was mistaken.
139
Senator Percy. Professor Chomsky, just a few final questions for
you.
DETERMINING COURSE OF DEVELOPMENT IN THIRD WORLD
To what extent was the American insistence on having its own way
in determining a course of development in the Third World the reason
behind the Vietnam episode ?
Mr. Chomsky. I would say to an overwhelming extent in Vietnam
and in all the other cases I have mentioned, of course, adding to that
the fact that it was not primarily the Third World that concerned us
there, but the industrial center of Japan and the American efforts to
insure French support for our plans for Western Europe. But, of
course, it was always argued, and with some justice, that a keystone
to that plan was the maintenance of Southeast Asia within the Ameri-
can orbit and that if Indochina was lost to the popular movement
there this very well might lead to further "ideological successes," to
further imitation elsewhere in Southeast Asia.
DID U.S. HAVE VITAL INTEREST IN VIETNAM ?
Senator Percy. In your judgment, did the United States have any
real interest, any kind of a vital interest, in Vietnam which caused us
to make a commitment or is the fact of our commitment what created
the U.S. interest in Vietnam — in other words, which came first, the
interest or the commitment ?
Mr. Chomsky. Well. I have to hedge a little bit on that because I
think there were real interests that did lead the United States into
Vietnam in the early period.
For example, the interests described so eloquently in the National
Security Council 48/1 that I read parts of. which describe the eco-
nomic and strategic interests of the United States in maintaining
control of South Vietnam and Southeast Asia and Japan and so on. I
think those interests were quite real and I think until about 1960 one
can argue there is perhaps some real relationship between interests
and means, although it is not the case after that. Nevertheless, I object
to our implementation of those interests. I object to it on moral
grounds and I would even object to it on legal grounds.
It was legally improper. In my testimony I mentioned National
Security Council memoranda which virtually refute, are almost a
parody of the laws the executive branch has sworn to uphold. When
people talk about our commitments and so on. I think our major com-
mitment is to a system of laws in which the U.N. Charter is a center-
piece, and that had we simply kept to that we would not have pursued
whatever interests we had by forceful intervention in the internal
affairs of someone else.
sphere of influence
Senator Percy. Lastly, in an area I want to do justice to, the sphere
of influence which Walter Lippman feels to be so important— I did
engage in discussions with him in a seminar in Latin America : in fact,
there were brilliant participants. He had difficulty defending Vietnam.
Is it likely, in your judgment, in our present state of Chinese-
83-605—73 10
140
American relations that some sort of arrangement is going to be made
eventually with China and that the United States might end up with
granting to China the influence in an area that you might call its
sphere of influence that we have really long sought as an item ?
Mr. Chomsky. Again, I am not in the least convinced that had we
left Vietnam to its own people, this would be a Chinese sphere of in-
fluence. On the contrary, I think it is very likely that there would have
been a more or less Titoist development.
VIETNAMESE STRONGLY ANTI-CHINESE
The Vietnamese are strongly anti-Chinese. When you visit Hanoi,
the first thing they do is to take you to the War Museum where they
show you how they defeated the Chinese this and that time, and so
on and so forth. This is not for show ; that is very strongly ingrained ;
they are strongly independent.
If China had attempted to intervene in Vietnam they would be fight-
ing what we are fighting. I don't believe
Senator Percy. It is conceivable that a Communist government, a
strong one
Mr. Chomsky. Would be quite independent.
Senator Percy (continuing). Might have been a bigger buffer?
Mr. Chomsky. No doubt.
Senator Percy. Stronger buffer against Peking ?
Mr. Chomsky. I think there is every likelihood of that and, in fact,
it appears in the Pentagon record as the assessment of a number of
people. But since the resistance
Senator Percy. Our whole effort has been counterproductive ac-
cording to that theory.
CHINESE AGGRESSIVENESS
Mr. Chomsky. It has indeed been counterproductive according to
that theory. We said that we were attempting to contain China. I don't
believe that for a moment and I might say that to contain China is
a very simple matter because for many reasons China has been the
least aggressive of the great powers. It is concerned with its internal
problems. Perhaps someday in the distant future when China has
come to terms with its enormous internal problems, it will be an ag-
gressive state; but when U.S. intelligence, or the Pentagon papers, or
historians try to establish that, they really come a cropper. For in-
stance, in late 1964, the Pentagon Papers historian says, the aggressive-
ness of Communist China seemed very ominous to the United States.
The one bit of evidence that he can find is that Sukarno withdrew
Indonesia from the U.N., which led to various speculations. On those
grounds Chinese aggressiveness seemed ominous to the United States
and we had to move in to destroy Vietnam. We have to be very care-
ful to distinguish between propaganda and facts.
THEORY TAUGHT AT WAR COLLEGE
Senator Percy. Do either of you happen to know whether the mon-
olithic theory of Communism and world domination is still being
taught at the War College?
141
Mr. Schlesinger. I don't know. I haven't lectured at the War Col-
lege for years.
Senator Percy. Do you know ?
Mr. Chomsky. No.
COMMENDATION OF WITNESSES
Senator Percy. I want to thank both of our witnesses today on
behalf of the committee. We very deeply appreciate your being here,
the careful preparation that went into your testimony and your great
patience and forebearance here.
We will reconvene these hearings on the origin of the Vietnam War
tomorrow morning at 10 o'clock.
Two witnesses will testify on the early possible war involvement in
Indochina — Frank White, OSS officer, and Abbott Moffett, former
State Department official.
Thank you very much.
(Whereupon, at 1 :20 p.m., the hearing was adjourned, to reconvene
at 10 a.m., Thursday, May 11, 1972.)
CAUSES, ORIGINS, AND LESSONS OF THE VIETNAM
WAR
THURSDAY, MAY 11, 1972
United States Sex ate,
Committee on Foreign Relations,
Washington, B.C.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., in room 4221,
New Senate Office Building, Senator J. W. Fulbright (chairman),
presiding.
Present: Senators Fulbright, Javits, and Percy.
The Chairman. The committee will come to order.
OPENING STATEMENT
Today we concentrate on a period generally overlooked in the pub-
lic discussion of the Pentagon Papers or the origins of the war in
Vietnam. The roots of American involvement go deeper than the
Tonkin Gulf incident and deeper than the Kennedy or Eisenhower
commitments to South Vietnam. Because these roots reach back to
the Truman and Roosevelt Administrations, it is that period we wish
to discuss today.
Franklin Roosevelt was the first American President to pay seri-
ous attention to events in French Indochina. The record of his ad-
ministration clearly shows that he wanted Indochina to belong to
neither Japan nor France. During the Second World War he pressed
our allies and his own Administration to support his proposal for an
"international trusteeship" for the French colony, then under Japa-
nese occupation. The record also shows that neither his allies nor the
members of his own Administration shared his enthusiasm for this
proposal.
When the Truman Administration came into office, the State De-
partment quickly reversed Roosevelt's policy and told France that
we did not question her sovereignty over Indochina. We did this
despite the fact that a nationalist, leader named Ho Chi Minh had
established a republic in August 1945, that had effected control over
large areas of Vietnam above the 16th parallel. This republic ruled
Xorth Vietnam until the outbreak of war between France and the
Viet Minh in December 1946. This period is relevant to American
policy because it was at this time that we formed our opinion about
Ho Chi Minh and judged him to be an agent of "international Com-
munism" rather than a nationalist leader. We formed this judgment
even though Ho had made a determined effort to win American sup-
(143)
144
port both during and after the war. He said that he admired the
United States for its anticolonialist policy and he sought our diplo-
matic support and economic aid. For reasons that I hope we can dis-
cover today, we ignored these overtures and supported the French
in their efforts to regain control of their colony.
BACKGROUND OF WITNESSES
We are very fortunate today to have as witnesses two men who
were either involved in the decision-making process at the time these
events occurred or who observed the unfolding of both our policy
and the situation in Indochina.
Mr. Frank M. White is a former major in the Office of Strategic
Services or OSS which was the predecessor, in a sense, of our early
CIA, and a former reporter for Time magazine. As an officer in the
Secret Intelligence Section of OSS, Major White spent several months
in Hanoi in 1945 and 1946. There it was his job to report on the gen-
eral situation and to become acquainted with the leaders of the new
Democratic Republic of Vietnam. As a reporter for Time he has
covered not only the more recent war in Vietnam but also other post-
colonial wars around the world. He thus offers us not only valuable
information about early postwar Indochina but also a unique per-
spective on the course of events in that troubled part of the world.
Mr. Abbot Low Moffat has likewise led two distinguished careers.
For 14 years he was a member of the New York State Assembly and
for 17 years after that he served in the Department of State. He offers
the committee valuable insight into the period we are studying be-
cause he was Chief of the Division of Southeast Asian Affairs in the
State Department from 1943 to 1947, the years when the foundation
of our cold war foreign policy was laid. Throughout this time the
formulation of our policy toward French Indochina came partly
under his supervision.
Mr. Moffat also has the distinction of being the last American diplo-
mat to talk with Ho Chi Minh.
I think it is extremely timely and fortunate that we have two such
qualified witnesses on the origin of what I think is the greatest
tragedy in the history of this country, with the exception of our own
Civil War. While we have heard many distinguished scholars and
observers, I don't know of anyone who could bring to the committee
and to the attention of the public a more realistic and convincing
account of the early days of the creation of Vietnam and its inde-
pendence— and more significantly for us, the early days of our own
involvement. The tragedy of this involvement and the tragedy of
the mistakes of a great people, of the United States of America,
comes through from the testimony of such men better than in any
testimony that I have heard about.
Mr. White, you have not prepared a formal statement but if you
would, in effect, sort of reminisce for the benefit of the committee
from your personal experiences and observations of Mr. Ho Chi Minh
and the circumstances that surrounded the birth of the present policy
that finds us in virtually a confrontation with the two other greatest
powers in the world.
As you know, this morning I just heard on the radio as I came down
here an account of a very tough response by the government of Russia
145
to the latest initiative of our own government. It couldn't be more
timely than we now study how it is that we started and how this whole
matter began.
I wonder if you could do that? Say a little about your personal
relations there, more than I did, and then tell us what you know about
the beginning of this extraordinary policy that the United States has
been following.
STATEMENT OF FRANK M. WHITE, FORMER MAJOR, OFFICE OF
STRATEGIC SERVICES; FORMER REPORTER, TIME MAGAZINE
Mr. White. Mr. Chairman, I certainly will-
The Chairman". Pull that microphone in. We have a very inefficient
and weak system of public address here so you will have to pull it in
rather close because the audience cannot hear you.
Mr. White. First of all, Mr. Chairman, it is a great pleasure to be
here and I do hope that the kind of background that Mr. Moffat and
I can give you will be of help to the committee.
MR. WHITE'S EXPERIENCES
I would like to state in the first place that this goes back quite a long
time and one's memory does get somewhat rusty but I have followed
the events in Indochina since that time fairly closely in a rather pro-
fessional way.
I arrived at this point in time as an officer in OSS. I had been on
operations in Southeast Asia.
The Chairman. What was this time period ? When did you arrive ?
Mr. White. I went to Southeast Asia in the first part of 1943 and
1944.
The Chairman. 1944?
Mr. White. Yes.
The Chairman. 1943 ?
Mr. White. The mission of OSS — there were a number of missions
of OSS at that time in Southeast Asia, but I was mainly involved in
those guerrilla operations behind Japanese lines.
The Chairman. In North Vietnam ?
Mr. White. My particular operations did not take me to North Viet-
nam but some of our other operations did. OSS did send missions in
and met Ho — this is part of the record — before the Japanese
surrendered.
My own operations were mainly in Burma and Thailand ; but just
after the bomb exploded — we had moved forward to Rangoon which
had been cleared of Japanese forces — and OSS wanted then to send
what we called at the time "city teams" into all those capitals of
Japanese occupied Southeast Asia because it was clear, apparently, to
our superiors in Washington and elsewhere that there would be no
other intelligence group sending any kind of reports to Washington
or to the State Department or to the Department of Defense — the War
Department at that time — because obviously there were as yet no State
Department officers there ; there were no consulates ; nobody was there
representing U.S. interests in that part of the world.
In any event we were all invited, or those of us were invited to
volunteer if we wanted to and were selected out for various cities.
146
I volunteered and selected out for Saigon because primarily they
wanted someone who had had professional reporting experience and
before the war I had been a correspondent for the United Press ; and,
secondly, they wanted people who at least, according to their records,
spoke French, and it appeared on my record, rather inaccurately, that
I spoke French. And so I was with a team that went. We were pre-
pared, actually, to paratroop into Saigon but, as a matter of fact,
when we flew over the field we could see the Japanese below and they
were perfectly prepared to permit a plane to land. So instead of jump-
ing in. rather cavalier fashion, we landed in rather more orthodox
fashion.
The Chairman. What was the date of that ?
Mr. White. This was the day after the bomb.
The Chairman. You are talking about the atomic bomb here or in
Hiroshima?
Mr. White. I am talking about the first one.
The Chairman-. Yes.
Mr. White. And I can't really tell you the precise day of the month
because I haA'e forgotten.
The Chairman. It was in August of 1945 ?
Mr. White. Yes, it was the second or third week in August some-
time.
The Chairman. That's right, 1945.
Mr. White. That's right.
The Chairman. And you landed in Saigon ?
Mr. White. Right.
The Chairman. Go ahead.
witness' mission as liaison
Mr. White. Then, to get more directly to the point where I believe
the committee's interests lie, I stayed in Saigon on various missions
I was — we were — divided up with functions among the several offi-
cers within this group. Among other things, I was to be liaison with
both the French and the British when they arrived on the scene. The
British were the occupying — were responsible for the occupation of all
Southeast Asia below' the 16th parallel. A British general was the
normal commander of this operation ; Lord Mountbatten was the chief
commander ; he delegated that part of the world to a British Lt. Gen-
eral Gracey, and the French were then soon to be represented by Ad-
miral D'Argenlieu, and then, later, by Field Marshal LeClerc. So
my nominal role was to do the liaison between my group and those two
commands as they were fleshed out.
I should remind you that we not there very early in the game. The
British came with an initial delegation, a half dozen officers; the
French came and the British came on in force later.
Anyhow, at the end of October, the 1st of November, approximately,
we had noticed at Saigon that a number of things were transpiring and
there was a request that I be sent with a small group to Hanoi, which
was a rather complicated affair then because there were a lot of juris-
dictional problems between the two theaters of operations ; so I had to
go and clear my mission with General MacArthur's headquarters
in the Philippines and then later en route to — it was the long way
147
around to Hanoi, but I went by Manila and then subsequently to
Shanghai.
In Shanghai I was provided with Air Force transportation for me
and my group to Hanoi and we arrived in Hanoi around the — my recol-
lection is — the middle of November.
ACCOUNT OF HANOI
Two things were then in the process of happening : Well, perhaps,
at this juncture, Mr. Chairman, I had occasion to write a dispatch
many years later for publication in Life magazine and this was sent
actually from Indochina because I was there as a correspondent.
The Chairman. Why don't you read those. I think
Mr. White. Would that be proper?
The Chairman. Certainly.
Mr. White. I will try.
The Chairman. This is an account after you arrived in Hanoi ?
Mr. White. This was an account of those days in Hanoi that I was
to write some 20 years later :
In December, 1945, Hanoi was a strange and stricken town, restive, covered
with a film of red dust raised, more often than not, by crowds of tense demon-
strators moving in the streets. Most of the demonstrators carried streamers
identifying them as "Viet Minh" but there was also a profusion of non-Commu-
nist groups, less numerous and less well-organized, marching in counterdeinon-
strations. Whatever their political identification, the processions invariably
headed for a dark red building then called "Le Palais du Gouvernement" inside
of which lived
The Chairman. Please read that a little slower so we can get it. We
don't have copies of it, so read it so I can hear it clearly.
Mr. White (reading) :
* * * processions invariably headed for a dark red building then called "Le
Palais du Gouvernemeut" inside of which lived a frail, lonely man named Ho
Chi Minh.
The Chairman. This was your first meeting ?
Mr. White. This was my first meeting.
Late in 1945 Ho had proclaimed the independence of the State of Vietnam
"within the French Union." In discussions with French representatives in Hanoi,
notably with Sainteny, who was Chief of the French mission, Ho was trying to
iron out precisely what the term "independence within the French Union" really
meant. The negotiations were not going well. For one thing, the French them-
selves disagreed on the whole question of independence. Saiteny and his group
proposed to give Vietnam something akin to "commonwealth status" with sub-
stantial autonomy in many fields, including its own army.
The arrival of the first French troops December 19th and tbe way they
arrived further darkened the scene. Under the Yalta agreement, British troops
from the Indian Army constituted the Allied Occupation Force in the south
of Vietnam, below the 16th parallel. In Tonkin the Chinese had been given
the occupation assignment. The Chinese, under Marshal Lu Han, who was also
called the "other Chinese Gimo," bad devoted themselves to looting the country
systematically of everything of value they could find.
I was trying, sir, in this dispatch, to portray the way Hanoi looked
at that time. The French had not been authorized as yet to return in
any strength; Ho was running a precariously organized provisional
government and the Chinese were the main occupation force at the
time, and they were busy looting the country. It was curious to see
148
they were carrying everything off from out of Hanoi on their backs
like ants leaving an anthill. It was an extraordinary scene. This was
the situation when I arrived at that time.
witness' mission
I go on in this dispatch saying there had been an OSS detachment
in Hanoi but it had been recalled.
My mission was to replace the Hanoi group. In the absence of any other offi-
cial Americans, my assignment was to report political developments in Tonkin
to the War Department and to the State Department. With me were a radio
operator and a cryptographer. With our radio and "one-time pad" — now, a one-
time pad is a system of encoding and decoding we all used to use in the field —
we set up operations in a couple of rooms on the top floor of the Metropole
Hotel. I sent a message to Ho Chi Minn identifying myself and asked to be
received.
For the chronicle of what happened after our arrival in Hanoi, via a U.S. Air
Force C-46 cargo plane from Canton —
I have to rely on memory of many years ago. The dispatches that
I was to send from Hanoi were all sent through channels by our radio
from the Hotel Metropole. They went to OSS, I suppose, someplace,
then into the archives of that period. Unless, of course, they have been
destroyed, they are probably still classified. At least we sent them all
Top Secret, encoded, but, anyway I have no way to refer back to re-
fresh my memory on the period.
But the overall scene does remain vivid.
There were mobs in the streets. Chinese troops continued to file out of Hanoi
carrying their loot in bullock carts, captured Japanese trucks and even on their
backs.
All the elements of a combustive explosion were there.
The French had been given authorization ; presumably Washington
concurred. I was not told but anyhow, the French were going to re-
occupy, reinvest Tonkin in the month of December of that year; and
they had assembled a flotilla of warships headed by the battle cruiser
Richelieu and they also had a flotilla of LST's; they obviously had
been American at one time but were provided by the British from
American sources originally.
Anyhow, the point to me — the function of my mission at that junc-
ture was to see how this explosive situation might develop.
Ho was there. The French coming back; there were the Chinese.
Everybody was — many people were acting pretty independently of
instructions from their main capital. We were all a long way from
instructions from higher authorities.
Anyhow, picking up my dispatch :
I sat in a waterfront cafe in Haiphong and watched the incoming heavy
cruiser RICHELIEU, then the only capital ship in the French navy, lob shells
into the foothills behind the port city. These, it turned out later, constituted a
show of force rather than an attack but the shelling served to heighten tensions
another notch.
CONVERSATION WITH I-IO CHT MINH
At the epicenter of all this sat Ho Chi Minh who invited me to call on him
shortly after the French landing at Haiphong.
Ho received me late in the afternoon. Save for a doorman, he appeared to be
alone in the big palace. I sat with him in the main "salon" in the front of the
building, both of us side by side in straightbacked chairs, a small table between
149
us. We were undisturbed for the next two hours. There were no interruptions,
no secretaries, no telephone calls, no messengers. This by itself was strange,
given the conflict and tumult outside. At one juncture a male servant produced
tea and left. Ho wore the traditional high-buttoned tunic, floppy pants of the
same khaki material. His beard was then wispy and his manner curiously
detached. I was unprepared for a person so slight.
I began the conversation, explaining that I had come to report on events then
happening in Vietnam and to transmit whatever messages he might want passed
to U.S. authorities in Washington. I can't remember the conversation in detail,
of course, but the general burden of his remarks are still with me. The con-
versation began in French but he later switched to English. He begged my par-
don, saying that he would like to use his English which he rarely had occasion
to do. The fact was that his English was better than my French.
He had no specific messages he wanted to transmit, but he said he was glad
that there was interest in the United States in what was transpiring in this far-
away corner of the globe.
Ho wondered if Americans knew how strongly the Vietnamese people desired
independence. He went back to the history of early Chinese invasions, then
reviewed the French occupation and finally the past five years under the Japa-
nese. In great detail he developed his theme, the burden of which was that no
matter who the occupier, the Vietnamese people had always been determined
to resist. At no juncture in this recital did he refer in any way to himself or
even to the Communist Party, although he was to mention the latter later on.
The second part of the conversation had to do with the present situation and
what it implied for the future of the country. For a man who had spent most
of the last five years hidden in the jungles of northwest Tonkin with a price on
his head, he passed over the Japanese invasion of recent history with little
comment.
Ho talked at greater length about the Chinese who were still streaming out
of the city. The hardship and destruction they had caused in their relatively
brief stay broiight him, it seemed to me, very close to tears, especially their brutal
treatment of Vietnamese women.
But what Ho really wanted to talk about wasn't the past but his country's
prospects for the future. He referred to the past mainly to underscore the resil-
iency and determination of the people. Having made his case for the will of the
Vietnamese to be independent, he then began to discuss what they would need
to realize a better future. It was mainly in this context that he mentioned France,
the Soviet Union — and, later the United States, in that order.
As for France, Ho said that in many ways the French had been helpful to the
country and that a special "sympathie" existed between the French and "our
people." He continued by saying that he felt that many French recognized finally
that times had changed and that the traditional colonial form of rule had to end.
He believed that men like Sainteny and others understood this and were prepared
to cede real independence to Vietnam over a period of years. However, he could
not be sure. He could not be certain that the arrangements he was reaching with
French representatives in Hanoi would be honored either in Saigon or in Paris.
Only time would tell that. Nor, he continued, could he be sure that many of his
own people would be willing to trust the French or abide the delays that might
occur in the negotiations.
He asked me if I had seen the crowds in the streets. When I said that I had but
was not sure what they meant, he replied, "For many of our people, patience has
come to an end."
HO CHI MINH'S CONVERSATION
He then brought up the Soviet Union. It was only at this juncture that he
mentioned anything about himself personally. He referred to his young days as
an '"idealist" and his resulting troubles with French police. He mentioned that a
sister had been maltreated and imprisoned in the Penal Colony at Poulo Condor.
That is the one where the cages were to appear in more recent
times — as a result of her activity and his.
Eventually he had gone to the Soviet Union, he said, and studied the teaching
of Marx and Lenin. He did not dwell on this much except to say that he believed
that revolution had benefited the Russian people and that he had become a be-
liever in Communism. But he went on to say that he did not believe that the
150
Soviet Union either could or would make any kind of a real contribution to-
building of what he called a new Vietnam.
And let me make an aside here, not from my notes, but I do also
recall at that time that one of the peculiarities of Ho was his enormous
curiosity. He wanted to he told about everything and this was not only
a trait that I found myself in talking to him but I had a colleague in
the British intelligence there at the time, well known, Colonel Trevor
Wilson, who stayed on in Hanoi for many, many years both under
cover and above ground ; and he, also — I have seen him since in the last
several years and he had that same recollection that Ho was always
deeply curious as to what was going on. Ho knew, for example, that
there had been large destruction by the German invasion of Russia.
He knew that there had been some reconstruction but he had no idea-
he asked me what went on in Stalingrad. Of course, I had not seen
Stalingrad either but I had seen more recent newspapers and I had
read them and I could give him more of an account than he had, since
he had been so isolated. You have no idea what living five years in a
jungle in a remote northwestern corner is.
HO CHI MINH's CORRESPONDENCE WITH GANDHI AND NEHRU
He was most destitute of knowledge, and during this period, I learned
from his conversations but also from my British colleague friend,
that he engaged in long correspondence with Gandhi and Nehru:
people he would just write out of the blue and ask them for their
views of what was going on and they responded to him. So there was
a voluminous amount of what must be fascinating correspondence,
someplace, of all this correspondence, (Ho) trying to recover from his
ignorance of what was going on in the world.
Vietnam's need for investments of money and machines
It was in this context that he asked me if I had seen any of the Vietnamese
countryside. I confessed I had seen hut little of the south and none of the north.
Then he went into a lengthy description of the economy of the country, particu-
larly stressing its dependence on rice. What we really need, he said, is large in-
vestments of money and machines, at first to repair and improve our dike system
and then later, when we are self-sufficient in food, the means to make us a modern
country in the industrial sense. Then he asked me if I thought the Russians at
present could make such a contribution. I said I was not in any position to
know.
Then he answered his own question by describing his understanding of the
destruction that the war had caused in the Soviet Union, and concluded that
the Russians would have their hands full for the next decade in rebuilding their
own country.
The United States, Ho said, was probably in the best position to aid Vietnam
in the postwar years. He said that we had emerged from the war with enormous
power and prestige in the world. He also mentioned that America was a Pacific
power and therefore would logically have a particular interest in the area. He
also dwelled at some length on the disposition of Americans as a people to be
sympathetic to self-determination of nations and generous in making contribu-
tions to less fortunate states. But here again he doubted that the United States
Government could be counted on to come to the aid of Vietnam — in a massive way.
He said he felt that the U.S. Government would find more urgent things to do.
He said something to th^ effect that, after all, Vietnam is a small country and
far away. Vietnam could not be expected to loom large in the preoccupations of
the United States.
[Laughter.]
151
Mr. White [Reading]
In short, he was saying that he hoped America would interest itself in Vietnam
hut he didn't believe, in the final analysis, we would.
It was quite dark when I left the palace. He had given me no specific messages
or requests to transmit. I returned to the Metropole. We had made no firm plans
to meet again.
RECEPTION GIVEN BY HO IN PALACE
Thus it came as a surprise to receive a message from Ho just a few moments
after returning to the hotel. The message said that he regretted the short notice,
but would I care to come to a reception he was giving that same evening at the
Palace? The invitation sounded quite casual and extemporaneous, but I changed
uniforms and was back at the palace by 7 :00 p.m. It turned out to be an extraor-
dinary evening.
There were three other guests with Ho when I was ushered into the same salon
we'd met in that afternoon before.
All three were Vietnamese. Two were elderly men in mandarin robes and head-
pieces. The third was much younger. He wore white shorts and an open neck white
shirt. The latter was introduced to me as "The Provisional Minister of National
Defense." He was Nguyen Van Giap — the general. At that time the name held
little significance, nor could I engage him in much conversation either in French
or English. The two elders turned out to be provisional ministers also — of educa-
tion and cultural affairs, or some such. At the time I felt that I was simply being
given an opportunity to meet some of Ho's official family informally. Rose wine
was served.
Then suddenly other guests began arriving. Through the double doors of the big
room burst General LeClerc gripping his white malacon cane, followed by Gen-
erals Valluy and Salan, Sainteny and finally Colonel Mirmanbeau, LeClerc's
Chief of Staff. This was the first team —
As I explained earlier, as I was a liaison officer, I knew all of them
well —
Although my association with LeClerc had always been cordial, the French
never concealed their irritation and distrust of OSS.
LeClerc was visibly distressed to see me there. He had no idea that
Americans were there, and it is not mentioned in this particular dis-
patch because it wasn't pertinent but General LeClerc had been very
unhappy with the activities of the French OSS unit in the south of
the border as well as those in the north.
The Chairman. You mean the Americans ?
Mr. White. Yes. sir ; I am sorry.
The Chairman. The American OSS?
Mr. White, Yes, our activities.
The Chairman. Yes.
Mr. White. And indeed the first detachment commander in the
south was a young1 American colonel called Peter Dewey, and the
French had succeeded, in ways that were never explained to us. in ef-
fecting Colonel Dewey's recall, and indeed it was ironic and rather
tragic that Colonel Dewey was assassinated in Saigon the night before
he was to have been recalled: and it was rather unclear to all of us
there at the time who did the assassination. I personally saw the assas-
sination happen because it happened very close to where we were stay-
ing and I could actually see the people shooting the guns at him. so it
could be determined whether it was a native Anna mite. non-Caucasian,
if vou will, but who ordered the assassination was never clear: but it
was clear that the French were very pleased to have Dewey recalled.
Next in order of arrival came the Field Commander of Lu Han's
Chinese army and his Chief of Staff. The greetings exchanged on all
152
sides .were glacial and, finally, representing the British Commander in
Indochina, came Lt, Colonel Trevor Wilson, the Chief of Ml-5 in
Hanoi, the one whom I referred to earlier.
ANECDOTE REGARDING DINNER
We did not make a cozy group. When dinner was announced, I wasn't prepared
for that either. At first I wasn't sure that I was invited for dinner. Ho's note to
me had only mentioned a "reception." Befitting my relatively modest rank of
Major, obviously among four-star generals and above, I held back until all the
others had found their places at the dinner table and were seated. If there
hadn't been an empty chair I was prepared to slink away but there was an empty
chair and it was next to Ho's place, and I could see that there was an invitation
and the invitation carried my name.
The dinner was a horror. The French confined themselves to the barest mini-
mum of conversation and scarcely spoke to the Chinese. For their part, the
Chinese got drunk, — really wildly drunk, and at one point Ho spoke to me-
very quietly and I turned to him and I said, "I think, Monsieur Le President
there is some resentment over the seating arrangement." I meant my place, of
course, next to him as the seat of honor. "I can see that," said Ho, "but who else
would I have to talk to?" he replied.
I think it was a rather telling anecdote. I hope so, because he did at
that point in time, give the whole impression of a man very much iso-
lated, very much defensive and very much on the reserve.
I saw Ho Chi Minh several other times in the course of the weeks I stayed
on in Hanoi but none of these encounters were terribly memorable.
HO*S LEAVING FOR PARIS FOR NEGOTIATIONS WITH FRENCH GOVERNMENT
There were plenty of developments to report to Washington including Ho's
decision to go to Paris to finish his negotiations with the French government.
And then, of course, in March — that was the conclusion of this
dispatch that I was to write for Life — Ho did go and I will leave
to others who reported to this committee earlier on what transpired
in Paris.
My own tour was finished there. Ho left. When I last saw him before
he left for Paris and his discussions, he was hopeful but not partic-
ularly confident that they were going to work out. He felt, as he
originally suggested to me, that extremists on both sides, his own as
well as French public opinion, would make it very difficult for him
to come to a meaningful agreement in achieving a real measure of
independence for his country.
Obviously, he was more than prophetic in some of the things he said.
Then I returned to Saigon and stayed on in the theater somewhat
longer on other missions, and then came home.
WITNESS IN VIETNAM BEFORE, DURING TET OFFENSIVE
It is maybe pertinent to the testimony that I can provide for the
committee that after this period I had one other occasion to spend a
substantial amount of time in Vietnam, and that was during the Tet
offensive or just before the Tet offensive in 1967 and 1968. 1 was a cor-
respondent at that juncture for Time and Life magazines; and
then from the period mainly from 1918 to 1950 I was on the Paris staff
of Time magazine and Life magazine, and then in 1954 at the time
153
of the Peace Conference in Geneva I returned to Paris and was, from
then until the middle or the first part of the 1960's, I was Paris Bureau
Chief of the two magazines and, of course, one of the principal stories
we had at that time was the French aspect of the Vietnam story; and
also I had occasion to watch the dissolution of the French colonial
empire elsewhere, most notably in North Africa, and I did cover the
French departure from such countries as Tunisia, Morocco and Al-
geria and a good deal of the French black empire or black Africa.
PARALLELS BETWEEN WITHDRAWAL EFFORTS
If the chairman will forgive me. I can't help but be struck by some
parallels between the U.S. efforts to withdraw from Vietnam and the
problems of the French withdrawal from North Africa. So many of
the arguments it seemed pertained ; I have that sort of deja vu feeling
that I have been through some of this before because we heard so
many of these arguments in the past from many similar quarters that
we now hear in this country, about our participation in Vietnam.
One of those is the one that you have heard most often from French
governments — was the one about our credulity — "Will anybody ever
listen to France if we withdraw from — " the most dramatic one, of
course, was Algeria, but also from Morocco and Tunisia before that —
"What will France's word be worth?"
Another popular argument at the time was : "We are letting down
our allies, our American friends." Very many French leaders would
argue: "Our American friends would be let down because we are hold-
ing on for strategic reasons in North Africa : The naval bases in
Morocco and Tunisia."
There was another argument that the French leadership used to use
against departing from their colonies. This one was or would be the
economic one that we heard some of yesterday. I was privileged to
listen to some of the testimony yesterday, the argument that these
colonies in North Africa were essential, vital to French national inter-
ests, economically as well as strategically and politically.
The fourth and very principal argument, was the military one,
somewhat associated with the prestige, one, but the one that goes:
So many of our sons have fought here and died here, and to leave after
this would be a disgrace to France, dishonor to our sons" — arguments
you hear, obviously, passionately in this country now.
BLOOD BATH ARGUMENT
Another one that was strongly argued and at least I seem to hear
reverberations in America now, is the one, is the economic one I was
alluding to and it is also the one that goes familiarly into the night
of the long knives.
The Chairman. Blood bath?
Mr. White. Pardon?
The Chairman. Blood bath?
Mr. White. Blood bath is the phrase.
The Chairman. That is what thev called it.
Mr. White. It was argued if the French were to leave any one of
those places from Vietnam down through Tunisia. Morocco. Algeria,
154
that our friends, i.e., the regimes that the French had put in place —
they used to argue they were duly elected — frequently some kind of
an electoral process had been gone through — but not many of us
kidded ourselves that they were really bona fide democratically elected
in our sense of the word, but in any event, however, they were or —
or how they got there, to depart and leave there was tantamount to
condemning them to death.
I think that the members of the committee would have to be hard
pressed not to figure out whatever happened to all those people.
You know there wasn't all that big a blood bath. In the case of
Vietnam before, a few ministers, a few French creatures like Bao Dai
suddenly found it much more healthy to live in villas on the French
Riviera than to stay where they were, out they had villas on the Riviera
anyhow, most of them. So the notion that when the French presence,
as the French like to use the word, departed from any of these places
that the French credulity would be attacked, French word in inter-
national circles would lose force and authority, that the economy
would be wrecked, that people would be killed — none of these things,
in fact, in my opinion, came to pass.
To be sure, many French graveyards contain the bodies of young
Frenchmen, brave young Frenchmen, who died in Vietnam and that
is to be deplored ; but the notion that— well, let me put it another way :
The French franc at that time during this period of the 1940's, early
1950's, the French franc was about 600 to the dollar in the black market,
if my recollection is correct. I confess to having exchanged some
dollars in those days at that price. The French franc is very strong —
4 to 1 to the dollar — 4 to 1, and strengthening every day, so in terms
of what it did to the French economy and what it did to the French
voice, I think it is heard as loudly in the world as it was before, before
Algeria, before leaving Indochina.
DANGEROUS TO DRAW TOO MANY PARALLELS
I think it is always dangerous to draw too many parallels. As a
professional correspondent, I am not in the parallel-drawing business,
but I do think it is worth noting, to the people whose concern this
whole affair is, some of those things that were directly predicted and
as related, referred to in this present context, at least in the case of
the French in Indochina and the French in North Africa, those things
substantially did not transpire.
I think I would like to leave it there, but I would invite the
Chair to ask me any questions in areas that he feels I can be of any
enlightenment.
(Take 1 and take 2 of Frank White's dispatch of January 22, 1968,
follow:)
Saigon, January 22, 1968.
To: Lang for Farmer, New York.
From: Frank White, Saigon.
In December 1945, Hanoi was a strange and stricken town, restive, covered
with a film of red dust raised, more often than not, by crowds of tense demon-
strators moving in the streets. Most of the demonstrators carried streamers
identifying them as "Viet Minh" but there was also a profusion of non-Communist
groups, less numerous and less well organized, marching in counter demonstra-
tions. Whatever their political irtentifir-jitinn. the urucessions invariahh' headed
155
for a dark red building then called "Le Palais Du Gouvernement" inside of which
lived a frail lonely man named Ho Chi Minh.
Late in 1945 Ho had proclaimed the independence of the state of Vietnam
"within the French union." In discussions with French representatives in Hanoi,
notably with Sainteny, who was chief of the French mission, Ho was trying to
iron out precisely what the term "independence within the French union" really
meant. The negotiations were not going well. For one thing, the French them-
selves disagreed on the whole question of independence. Sainteny and his group
proposed to give Vietnam something akin to "commonwealth status" with sub-
stantial autonomy in many fields, including its own army.
The arrival of the first French troops Dec. 19th, and the way they arrived
further darkened the scene. Under the Yalta Agreement, British troops from the
Indian Army constituted the Allied Occupation Force in the south of Vietnam,
below the 16th parallel. In Tonkin the Chinese had been given the occupation
assignment. The Chinese under Marshall Lu Han (the "other Chinese Gimo") had
devoted themselves to looting the country systematically of everything of value
they could find.
This, then, was the situation when I arrived in Hanoi. At the time I was a
young major in the OSS (Office of Strategic Services) in Saigon, there had been
an OSS detachment in Hanoi but it had been recalled. My mission was to re-
place the Hanoi group. In the absence of any other official Americans, my
assignment was to report political developments in Tonkin to the War Depart-
ment and to the State Department. With me were a radio operator and a
cryptographer. With our radio and "one-time pad" code books, we set up opera-
tions in a couple of rooms on the top floor of the Metropole Hotel. I sent a message
to Ho Chi Minh, identifying myself and asked to be received.
For the chronicle of what, happened after our arrival in Hanoi, via a U.S.
Airforce C-46 cargo plane from Canton, I now rely without too much confi-
dence on memories of 22 years ago. The dispatches I sent to my own rear base
at Singapore for forwarding to Washington may or may not still exist in CIA
archives. In any event I haven't seen them.
But the overall scene remains as vivid as a flash of lightning against a tower-
ing storm. There were the mobs in the streets. Chinese troops continued to file
out of Hanoi, carrying their loot in bullock carts, captured Japanese trucks and
even on their backs. They took everything — plumbing fixtures, tiles off the roofs,
furniture and even stripped pipes of buildings. And into the port of Haiphong
steamed the flotilla, loaded with French troops, under the command of an angry
and frustrated General (later Marshal) LeClerc.
All the elements of the combustive explosion were there. Would the French
fire on the pillaging Chinese? How would the Vietnamese, already bloodied in
skirmishes with the French in various parts of the country, react to the sight of
a French reinvestment of their capital city? I sat in a waterfront cafe in Hai-
phong and watched the incoming heavy cruiser "Richelieu", then the only capital
ship in the French navy, lob shells into the foothills behind the port city. These,
it turned out later, constituted a show of force rather than an attack but the
shelling served to heighten tensions another notch.
At the epicenter of all this sat Ho Chi Minh who invited me to call on him
shortly after the French landing at Haiphong.
Ho received me late in the afternoon. Save for a doorman he appeared to be
alone in the big palace. I sat with him in the main "salon" in the front of the
building, both of us side by side in straight-backed chairs, a small table between
us. We were undisturbed for the next two hours. There were no interruptions,
no secretaries, no telephone calls, no messengers. This by itself was strange, given
the conflict and tumult outside. At one juncture a male servant produced tea and
left. Ho wore the traditional high buttoned tunic, floppy pants of the same khaki
material. His beard was then wispy and his manner curiously detached. I was
unprepared for a person so slight.
I began the conversation, explaining that I had come to report on events then
happening in Vietnam and to transmit whatever messages he might want passed
to U.S. authorities in Washington. I can't remember the conversation in detail,
of course, but the general burden of his remarks are still with me. The conver-
sation began in French but he later switched to English. He begged my pardon,
saying that he would like to use his English which he rarely had occasion to
do. The fact was that his English was better than my French.
He had no specific messages he wanted to transmit, but he said he was glad
that there was interest in the United States in what was transpiring in this far
away corner of the globe.
83-605—73 11
156
We wondered if Americans knew how strongly the Vietnamese people desired
independence. He went back to the history of early Chinese invasions, then
reviewed the French occupation and finally the past five years under the Japa-
nese. In great detail he developed our theme, the burden of which was that no
matter who the occupier, the Vietnamese people had always been determined
to resist. At no juncture in this recital did he refer in any way to himself or even
to the Communist Party, although he was to mention the latter later on.
The second part of the conversation had to do with the present situation and
what it implied for the future of the country. For a man who had spent most of
the last five years hidden in the jungles of northwest Tonkin with a price on
his head, he passed over the Japanese invasion of recent history with little
comment.
He talked at greater length about the Chinese who were still streaming out
of the city. The hardship and destruction they had caused in their relatively
brief stay brought him, it seemed to me, very close to tears, especially their
brutal treatment of Vietnamese women.
But what Ho really wanted to talk about wasn't the past but his country's
prospects for the future. He referred to the past mainly to underscore the
resiliency and determination of the people. Having made his case for the will of
the Vietnamese to be independent, he then began to discuss what they would need
to realize a better future. It was mainly in this context that he mentioned France,
the Soviet Union and the United States, in that order.
As for France, Ho said that in many ways the French had been helpful to
the country and that a special "sympathie" existed between the French and
"our people". He continued by saying that he felt that many French recognized
finally that times had changed and that the traditional colonial form of rule
had to end. He believed that men like Sainteny and others understood this and
were prepared to cede real independence to Vietnam over a period of years. How-
ever, he could not be sure. He could not be certain that the arrangements he was
reaching with French representatives in Hanoi would be honored either in Sai-
gon or in Paris. Only time would tell that. Nor, he continued, could he be sure
that many of his own people would be willing to trust the French or abide the
delays. He asked me if I had seen the crowds in the streets. When I said that I
had but was not sure what they meant, he replied: "For many of our people,
patience has come to an end."
He then brought up the Soviet Union. It was only at this juncture that he
mentioned anything about himself personally. He referred to his young days as
a "idealist" and his resulting troubles with French police. He mentioned that a
sister had been maltreated and imprisoned in the penal colony at Poulo Condor
as a result of his activity. Eventually he had gone to the Soviet Union, he said,
and studied the teachings of Marx and Lenin. He did not dwell on this much
except to say that he believed that revolution had benefited the Russian people
and that he had become a believer in Communism. But he went on to say that he
did not believe that the Soviet Union either could or would make any kind of
a real contribution to building of what he called a new Vietnam in the near future.
It was in this context that he asked me if I had seen any of the Vietnamese
countryside. I confessed I had seen but little of the south and none of the north.
Then he went into a lengthy description of the economy of the country, particu-
larly stressing its dependence on rice. What we really need, he said, is large in-
vestments of money and machines — at first to repair and improve our dike sys-
tem and then later, when we are self sufficient in food, the means to make us a
modern country in the industrial sense. Then he asked me if I thought the Rus-
sians at present could make such a contribution. I said I didn't know. Then he
answered his own question by describing his understanding of the destruction
that the war had caused in the Soviet Union (remember, this was 1946) and
concluded that the Russians would have their hands full "for the next decade"
in rebuilding their own country.
The United States, Ho said, was probably in the best position to aid Vietnam
in the post-war years. He said that we had emerged from the war with enormous
power and prestige in the world. He also mentioned that America was a Pacific
power and therefore would logically have a particular interest in the area. He also
dwelled at some length on the disposition of Americans as a people to be sym-
pathetic to self determination of nations and generous in making contributions
to less fortunate states. But here again he doubted that the United States Gov-
ernment could be counted on to come to the aid of Vietnam. He said he felt that
157
the U.S. Government would find more urgent things to do. He said something
to the affect that, after all, Vietnam, is a small country and far away. Vietnam
could not be expected to loom large in the preoccupations of the United States.
In short, he was saying that he hoped America would interest itself in Vietnam
but he didn't believe, in the final analysis, we would.
It was quite dark when I left the palace. He had given me no specific mes-
sages or requests to transmit. I returned to the metropole. We had made no firm
plans to meet again.
Thus it came as a surprise to receive a message from Ho a few moments after
returning to the hotel. The message read that he regretted the short notice, but
would I care to come to a reception he was giving that same evening at the
palace? The invitation sounded quite casual and extemporaneous, but I changed
uniforms and was back at the palace by 7 p.m. It turned out to be an extraordi-
nary evening.
There were three other guests with Ho when I was ushered into the same
salon we'd met in before. All three were Vietnamese. Two were elderly men in
mandarin robes and headpieces. The third was much younger. He wore white
shorts and an open neck white shirt. The latter was introduced to me as "the pro-
visional minister of national defense." He was Nguyen Van Giap. At the time the
name held little significance. Nor could I engage him in much conversation either
in French or English. The two elders turned out to be provisional ministers also —
of education and cultural affairs, or some such. At the time I felt that I was
simply being given an opportunity to meet some of Ho's official family informally.
Rose wine was served.
Then suddenly other guests began arriving. Through the double doors of
the big room burst General Leclerc gripping his white malacca cane, followed
by Generals Valluy and Salan, Sainteny, and finally Colonel Mirmanbeau,
LeClerc's chief of staff. This was the first team for the French military in Indo-
China. I knew them well and they knew me. At the time I was on General Leclerc's
staff as the liaison officer for our Saigon detachment of OSS. Although my asso-
ciation with Leclerc had always been cordial, the French never concealed their
irritation and distrust of OSS. LeClerc and company had not looked for me
that night at Ho Chi Minn's or for that matter for anyone else.
But even the French were startled to see the next group of arrivals. In came
the field commander of Lu Han's Chinese army and his chief of staff. The greet-
ings exchanged on all sides were glacial. And finally, representing the British
commander in Indo-China, came Lt. Col. Trevor Wilson, the chief of MI-5 in
Hanoi.
We did not make a cozy group. When dinner was announced I wasn't prepared
for that either. At first I wasn't sure that I was invited for dinner. Ho's note
to me had only mentioned "a reception." Befitting my modest rank I held back
until all the others had found their places and were seated at the table. If
there hadn't been an empty chair I was prepared to slink away. But there was —
and it was next to Ho's. I sat down.
The dinner was a horror. The French confined themselves to the barest mini-
mum of conversation and scarcely spoke to the Chinese. For their part the Chinese
got drunk "gam be-ing" everyone around the table. At one point I spoke to Ho
very quietly. "I think Mr. President there is some resentment over the seating
arrangement at this table." I meant of course my place next to him. "Yes," he
replied, "I can see that. But who else could I talk to?"
I saw Ho Chi Minh several other times in the course of the weeks I stayed
on in Hanoi but none of these encounters were memorable. There were plenty of
developments to report to Washington including Ho's decision to go to Paris
to finish his negotiations with the French Government.
One person who had seen a good deal of Ho before this period and for some
time thereafter was my British colleague, Trevor Wilson. Wilson was the first
British officer in Hanoi after the Japanese surrendered and later became
Britain's first consul general accredited to Ho Chi Minh's provisional government.
He is still around this part of the world. Now 65, Wilson is winding up his
career as public information officer for the British Embassy in Laos.
Trevor and I dined together the other night in Vientiane. I wouldn't want it.
mentioned in print but Wilson's memory isn't all that good these days. But he
remembered the dinner we went to that night in Hanoi. In fact he still has some-
where in his possession the menu that was served autographed by most of the
people at the table. My own souvenir of the night was an autographed picture
158
of himself that Ho sent me at the hotel the following day. Across it were written
the words : "To my good friend, Commandant White, Sincerely, Ho Chi Minn."
Wilson recalls Ho "As a man of great sincerity." Except for official occasions,
says Wilson, he lived as a hermit. He never wore anything save the same khaki
tunics, one way or the other. He left in March. I returned to Saigon.
Trevor and I dined together the other night in Vientiane. I wouldn't want it
mentioned in print but Wilson's memory isn't all that good these days. But he
remembered the dinner we went to that night in Hanoi. In fact he still has some-
where in his possession the menu that was served autographed by most of the
people at the table. My own souvenir of the night was an autographed picture
completely unadorned by any decorations or designations. Wilson does not recall
Ho drinking anything other then tea or an occasional bottle of soda.
Apparently Ho held considerable affection for Wilson. Wilson occupied a villa
just adjacent to the government palace grounds. Occasionally Ho would drop
over unannounced to talk. He invariably came alone. Once Ho invited Wilson to
attend a soccer match with him. As part of the ceremonies, Ho was supposed to
kick the ball to start the game. Wilson recalls it as a rather pathetic sight watch-
ing a man as frail as Ho trying to kick the ball but he gave it a determined try.
As one of the few, if not the only, western diplomat in Hanoi at the time, Wil-
son was often called on to intervene with Ho's government. When he couldn't get
action through regular channels, Wilson appealed directly to Ho. "He always told
the truth to me," says Wilson, "but you had to tell him the truth, too." One such
occasion involved a request from the French to do something about the plight of
14 French officers being held by the Communists somewhere in the country.
Ho insist Wilson give him the exact name of each of the Frenchmen, find out
where they were (apparently had no means or didn't want to find out for him-
self) and finally Wilson must submit a document giving his (Wilson's) word
that the Frenchmen, when apprehended, had not been in the country seeking to
harm the people of Vietnam.
Wilson had no difficulty getting the names from the French, but he did have
to hire some Chinese underworld types to locate the prison where they were being
held. Wilson also ascertained that the Frenchmen had been part of a group trying
to rescue other Frenchmen in the country and, as such, had no military or espio-
nage motives. This much established, Ho handed Wilson a note addressed to the
commander of the jail where the Frenchmen were held. Wilson personally went
to the jail and the commander honored Ho's note.
Over the period of time Wilson knew Ho — from September 1945 until Decem-
ber 1946 — Wilson found that Ho Chi Minh rarely discussed his personal life. He
did, however, talk about his first trip to Europe as a "Plongeur" on a messagerie
maritime steamer and also, later, as a dishwasher at the Savoy in London.
Similarly Ho rarely mentioned anything about his family — only the sister he
spoke to me about. "I often wondered how he became so well-educated and so
well informed," says Wilson, "particularly in view of the fact he had so little
formal schooling and spent so much of his life in hiding."
It is curious to say the least that no one I've met who knew Ho Chi Minh
ever found him exhibiting the qualities of tough mindedness or authoritarianism
that are normally the hallmark the political being particularly the communist
political animal. In observing Ho in that historically turbulent period of '45-46,
Trevor Wilson noticed this anomaly. His explanation is that the hard core
communist revolutionaries around Ho, notably Van Giap, recognized that given
the traditionalist nature of the Vietnamese people, they needed a father type
image as the head of their movement and that the personality of Ho Chi Minh was
ideally suited to their purposes. Wilson is persuaded that Ho was not consulted or
a party to most of the brutal measures that the regime took, particularly those
against landholding peasants.
The end of their association seems to support this view, at least in Wilson's
opinion.
Ho left Paris in the late spring or early summer of 1946. This fiasco of the
Fontainbleau talks from the Vietnamese point of view had been glossed over
under a meaningless communique. Ho took a slow boat back to Vietnam, landing
in the South (Wilson is unsure exactly where, but probably Saigon). Admiral
Thierry D'Argenlieu, the French high commissioner, met the boat and kissed Ho
on both cheeks.
However intended, D'Argenlieu's embrace very nearly became the kiss of death
for Ho Chi Minh. Between the time of his final return to Hanoi in October until
159
December 19th when the Viet Minh attacked and finally occupied Hanoi, Ho
became a virtual prisoner of his own regime. "I could never see him alone
again," recalls Wilson. "They moved him from one residence to another. He could
never speak to me privately." One of the last occasions they saw each other was
early in December. Wilson had called to deliver an important letter of state.
(Not for use, it was a communication from Nehru). Ho, according to Wilson,
read the letter, smiled wistfully and said, "Just tell him I have received his
message."
The Chairman. Jiist a couple of questions and then I will go to
Mr. Moffat.
WAS HO REPRESENTATIVE OF RUSSIANS ? INTERNATIONAL COMMUNISM ?
Your description there of your meeting with Ho was a very moving
one. Did you get the impression that he was acting as an agent for the
Russians? Did he convey to you an attitude that he was there as a
representative of Russia?
Mr. White. No, certainly not.
The Chairman. How about China, did you get the impression that
he was there as an agent of international communism?
Mr. White. No, quite the contrary was the case ; obviously the Chi-
nese Communists were 2 years away from taking power in China at
the time, or 3, but quite the contrary, he dwelt at really extraor-
dinary length on traditional hostility between his own people and the
Chinese people. It was exacerbated by the fact they were there looting
his country ; he dwelt very much on it.
The Chairman. Did he refer to Mao Tse-tung as having been one
of his principal sponsors, friend or otherwise?
Mr. White. He did not.
The Chairman. Did he refer to him at all?
Mr. White. He did not mention Mao Tse-tung at all.
The Chairman. Well
Mr. White. Nor, I confess, did I ask him anything about Mao Tse-
tung, either.
The Chairman. But our policy used to be justified on the ground
that he was a representative of an international Communist conspiracy
and was merely a cat's paw in the service of that conspiracy.
Mr. White. Yes, sir.
The Chairman. But your impression doesn't confirm that ?
Mr. White. No, sir ; it was not. As I say, when he did discuss the
Soviet Union, he said, "I don't think there is much that we here can
look for in terms of any kind of aid, moral, political or economic."
HO THOUGHT U.S. WOULD BE SYMPATHETIC
The Chairman. But he did think the United States would be sympa-
thetic to his striving for independence?
Mr. White. Yes.
The Chairman. Did he know anything about Franklin Roosevelt's
views ?
Mr. White. Yes, he did. He wanted to know more.
The Chairman. Did he believe that our Government would assist
him, if not materially at least morally, that we would be in support of
it or not?
160
Mr. White. Yes, he said that he felt that as a young country strug-
gling for its independence, that Vietnam would find sympathy from
the American people and from the U.S. Government.
The Chairman. Being as well-informed, apparently, as you say he
was striving to be, he still did not think that Vietnam would ever
attract the attention of the United States? He was afraid Vietnam
would not attract attention; the U.S. would not take interest in it?
Mr. White. That's right. He said that he felt it ranked well down
on the list of U.S. preoccupations.
The Chairman. He was not a very good prophet, was he ?
[Laughter.]
The Chairman. I think it is extremely interesting and so con-
vincing as to how completely misguided we were.
AVAILABILITY OF REPORTS
One last question :
You did report what you are telling us ?
Mr. White. Oh, yes.
The Chairman. To our government ?
Mr. White. Right.
The Chairman. You don't know whether those reports are in the
State Department or in the Defense Department or where they are?
Mr. White. I cannot say, sir.
The Chairman. Did you later ever see any of the people to whom
you reported in the United States and discuss this matter?
Mr. White. No, I did not. It is curious.
The Chairman. Who was the head of the OSS at that time when you
were there ? Was it Donovan ? Who was the head ?
Mr. White. General Donovan was still alive, yes, sir; and very
active.
The Chairman. Was he the head of OSS ?
Mr. White. Yes, sir.
The Chairman. In Washington?
Mr. White. In Washington ; yes, sir.
The Chairman. If those reports came through, would they come in
the normal course of events to him or his office ?
Mr. White. Sir, Mr. Chairman, we understood our reports were
distributed, were made available, by OSS
The Chairman. To the State Department?
Mr. White. To the State Department and to the War Department.
The Chairman. Have you ever made inquiries whether any of
those reports are still in existence ?
Mr. White. I have never made a formal one. I have seen — I have
had friends who have been in CIA and I have said, I have often won-
dered al oud where they might have gone but I never
The Chairman. Coiild vou help our staff identify those reports, get
more detail so we could initiate a request for them ?
Mr. White. Yes, certainly, of course, I will try.
The Chairman. It would be interesting; at least to inquire as to
whether or not those reports were available. I think they would be
historical documents. They are not in the Pentagon Papers, I suppose.
Do yon know whether your documents were transferred to the
custody of the CIA or not ?
161
Mr. White. I have no firsthand, personal knowledge of that, Mr.
Chairman.
The Chairman. All right.
Thank you very much. We will come back to you.
The Chairman. I would like to now ask Mr. Moffat if you would give
U9 your statement. It is very interesting. You just stay there and we
will probably pursue this later.
STATEMENT OF ABBOT LOW MOFFAT, FORMER CHIEF, DIVISION
OF SOUTHEAST ASIAN AFFAIRS, DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Mr. Moffat. Senator, I have been asked to present a statement of
my recollections of the handling of the Indochina problem in the
Department of State
The Chairman. Before you go on that, are you aware of the reports ?
Did these reports come to you ?
Mr. Moffat. I saw some of them, sir.
The Chairman. Good.
Mr. Moffat. I can't — I will come to that later.
The Chairman. Yes.
Mr. Moffat. We saw much less of the Indochina reports than we —
I saw of the Siamese. I had close working relations with the OSS on
the Siamese matters. I never could get it established on the Indochina
ones. I think all the OSS files are in the custody of the CIA and they
are in St. Louis, because I tried to get hold of some in connection with
some research I was doing on Siam and I think that is where they are.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, but go ahead. We will come
back to that after you make your statement.
Mr. White. Well, I was asked to present a statement of my recol-
lections of the handling of the Indochina problem in and during the
immediate postwar period 1945-1947, at which time I was Chief of
the Division of Southeast Asian Affairs.
I would like, Senator, to congratulate the committee on the excel-
lent Study No. 2 prepared by Robert M. Blum of your staff. The two
papers in the study are extremely competent summaries, it seems to me,
and I doubt that I can add anything except perhaps to place a slightly
different emphasis on certain points.
The Chairman. I appreciate very much your comment on that, Mr.
Moffat.
Mr. Moffat. It is not possible to understand some of the develop-
ments in 1945 without knowledge of what happened before. Until
the spring of 1944, the Office of Far Eastern Affairs had no jurisdic-
tion over those areas of the Far East which were colonies of European
countries, important though those colonies might be in Far Eastern
policy questions.
The British Commonwealth desk and the Western European desk
in the Office of European Affairs handled the problems and policies
concerning all British, French, Dutch and Portuguese colonies as in-
tegral parts of relations with the mother countries.
establishment of office of far eastern affairs
In the spring of 1944, however, there was established in the Office
of Far Eastern Affairs a new Division of Southwest Pacific Affairs,
162
the name of which was later changed to Division of Southeast Asian
Affairs, as our major activities clearly related to Southeast Asia other
than the Philippines. To this division was given primary jurisdiction
of matters relating to Thailand and concurrent jurisdiction with the
appropriate European desk of matters relating to the European col-
onies in Southeast Asia and in the Pacific Ocean. The significant word
in that statement is "concurrent." It meant that neither the European
nor the Far Eastern Divisions had the power to act without the con-
currence of the other, so that whichever division might be opposed to
affirmative or innovative action could prevent such action; and in
practice, moreover, it proved almost impossible to raise conflicting
views for resolution at higher levels as we were directed to agree before
consideration would be given to our recommendations.
Lawrence Salisbury was named chief of the new division and on
his resignation from the department about two months later I was
designated to succeed him and served in that capacity until July 1947.
NATIONALIST SENTIMENT BECOMING IMPORTANT FORCE IN S.E. ASIA
There had been many hopes and generalities uttered about the post-
war world including not least the Atlantic Charter, and the colonial
powers from time to time spoke vaguely of more self-government for
their colonies after the war. As we considered the prewar nationalist
movements in Southeast Asia and studied such reports as we then had
from the area, we reached the conclusion that nationalist sentiment
was becoming an important force in Southeast Asia. We felt that not
only to accomplish self-government which traditional American pol-
icy has always favored, but also to capture the nationalist movements
in behalf of the war effort our allies should be urged to be specific
in what they proposed to do after the war.
BRIEFING PAPER FOR PRESIDENT'S USE AT SECOND QUEBEC
CONFERENCE
Our division prepared, therefore, a briefing paper for the Presi-
dent's use at the Second Quebec Conference in September 1944,
which was initialed by all the appropriate divisions and offices and
was signed by the Secretary of State, Mr. Hull, on September 8.
I would like to quote from that memorandum as it appears in Mr.
Hull's memoirs because it states our government's goal at that time
and because of its reference to trusteeships :
In this memorandum we suggested the value of "early, dramatic and con-
certed announcements by the nations concerned making definite commitments
as to the future of the regions of Southeast Asia." We added : "It would be
especially helpful if such concerted announcements could include (1) specific
dates when independence or complete (dominion) self-government will be ac-
corded, (2) specific steps to be taken to develop native capacity for self-rule, and
(3) a pledge of economic autonomy and equality of economic treatment toward
other nations.
Such announcements might well be accompanied by ... a pledge to establish
a regional commission. The value of such concerted announcements would be
still further enhanced if each of the colonial powers concerned would pledge
a formal declaration of trusteeship under an international organization for
the period of tutelage ; but it might be unwise for the United States to attempt
to insist upon such a declaration of trusteeship by one country if similar dec-
163
larations could not be secured from the others. In addition to their great value
as psychological warfare, such announcements would appear to be directly in
line with American postwar interest."
Although Mr. Hull wrote the memorandum, the President warmly
approved the idea the Secretary presented, so far as I know, no effort
was made to seek such concerted announcements, presumably because
of the implacable opposition of Mr. Churchill to the trusteeship princi-
ple and to any discussion of British territories.
GROTJNDSWELL OF NATIONALISM ENGULFING S.E. ASIA
"While the European Divisions had initiated the memorandum
because, I believe, of its importance in psychological warfare, I did
not feel that they were entirely happy with the more basic objective.
From then on and as more and more information was received, one of
our major tasks during the whole time that I was with the Division
of Southeast Asian Affairs was to try to convince the European Divi-
sions of the mounting groundswell of nationalism which was engulf-
ing all Southeast Asia and, indeed, before I left the division, South-
ern Asia as well.
Their concern, of course, focused on our relations with the major
European powers ; rather naturally they tended to consider the colonial
problems in Southeast Asia as of relatively minor importance.
I well recall one senior officer asking me one day. "Why are you
concerning yourself with Indonesia ? It's only a Dutch colony." There
seemed to be little understanding of what was happening in South-
east Asia. Time and again the nationalist movements were character-
ized as simply the effect of Japanese propaganda. There was also, I
felt, little concept of the effect on the people of Southeast Asia of see-
ing the Europeans driven from the area by the Japanese, and no
thought seemed to be given to the effect of the massive, indeed total,
dislocation of the economic and social life of these people imder the
impact of the changes wrought by the war. We felt strongly that the
colonial powers could not pick up where they had been forced to leave
off or even with an allowance for 4 years of political development.
We became convinced that during the 4 years of war nationalis-
tic sentiment had progressed faster and farther than it would have
evolved during 20 or more years of peace.
president roosevelt's view on indochina
As is well known, President Roosevelt during 1943 and the first half
of 1944 expressed frequently the view that Indochina should be taken
from the French at the end of the war and placed under international
trusteeship pending full independence, and I might say at my level
we never got — I don't think we had any memories of that conversa-
tion— of those conversations — at all that the President had, but this
next one became our bible, I might say.
As late as February, 1944, the department in a memorandum to the
President proposed to proceed on the assumption that French armed
forces would be employed to some extent in military operations to free
Indochina from the Japanese, and that it would be desirable in the
civil affairs administration of the country to employ French nationals
164
having an intimate knowledge of the country. The President endorsed
this memorandum simply and succinctly : "No French help in Indo-
china— country on trusteeship."
We in the Southeast Asia Division strongly favored the President's
desire for Indochina and I hoped that he had some as yet secret plan
by which he expected to effect such trusteeship, for we were unable
to see how it could be implemented without applying the same policy
to the British and Dutch colonies in the area. I felt therefore that we
should at least voice our reservation which I did in the memorandum
sent to the President on September 8.
BRITISH SUPPORT OF FRENCH RETURN" TO INDOCHINA
During the weeks following the second Quebec Conference, British
support of a French return to Indochina became increasingly appar-
ent. A large French military mission was attached to the South East
Asia Command — SEAC — and the British SOE, corresponding to our
OSS, who were actively engaged in undercover operations in Indo-
china, were ordered by the Foreign Office to devote their efforts solely
to the French and to have nothing to do with Annamite or other
native organizations.
president roosevelt's hope for trusteeship for indochina
These and other facts were called to the President's attention in
November, together with an OSS statement that the British and
Dutch had arrived at agreement regarding the future of Southeast
Asia and were now about to bring the French into the picture. The
President reacted sharply. American approval must not be given to
any French military mission, he directed ; all our people and also the
British, Dutch and French must understand that we expected to be
consulted on the future of Indochina ; and then the significant remark
insofar as trusteeship was concerned: "We have made no final deci-
sions on the future of Indochina."
The conference at Yalta took place some weeks later and on April
3 the Secretary of State issued a statement with the President's ap-
proval that the United States, as a result of the Yalta talks, looked to
trusteeship as a postwar arrangement only for territories taken from
the enemy and such territories as might voluntarily be placed under
trusteeship. As the French clearly had no intention of voluntarily
placing Indochina under trusteeship, Mr. Stettinius' statement marked
the public end of Mr. Roosevelt's earlier hope for a trusteeship for
Indochina.
FRENCH PRESSED FOR U.S. HELP IN RECOVERING INDOCHINA
As the war approached its climax, the French, through the British,
pressed harder for American help in the recovery of Indochina from
the Japanese and for an active part in such operation, and also for a
formal civil affairs agreement. As late as January 1945, the Presi-
dent was adamant that he did not want the United States to be mixed
up in any decisions affecting the future of Indochina. Those were for
the postwar period and he did not want to get mixed up in any mili-
165
tary effort to liberate Indochina from the Japanese. But the French
did not give up. When in March Japan ousted the collaborationist
regime in Indochina and took over direct control, several thousand
French troops briefly opposed the Japanese before crossing into China
and the French asked for supplies and assistance from the 14th Air
Force in China. Although the President disapproved the release of a
statement suggested by the Department explaining that the United
States would give such help as it could be consistent with the opera-
tions and plans to which it was committed, the Department and the
Joint Chiefs authorized the 14th Air Force, in aid of the French, to
undertake operations against the Japanese in Indochina provided
such action did not interfere with other planned operations.
CONFLICT OF VIEWPOINT BETWEEN SOUTHEAST ASIAN DIVISION AND
EUROPEAN OFFICE
During this period we in the Southeast Asian Division had increas-
ingly the impression that the European Office favored the outright
return of Indochina to France and had little real concern about auton-
omy or self-rule or even of increased native participation in the gov-
ernment. An indication of this arose when a briefing memorandum
should, we felt, be prepared for the President for the Yalta Confer-
ence. We knew we could not get concurrence in a statement about Indo-
china that would meet our views, so we circulated again the memo-
randum signed by Mr. Hull on September 8. This time the European
Divisions declined to initial the document they had initialed less than
6 months before. No briefing paper concerning Southeast Asia ac-
companied the President to Yalta, so far as I laiow.
The net result of all this was that as the war in Europe ended, the
Department had no agreed policy regarding the future of Indochina.
The European Office and the Western Europe Division, confronted
with the major problems relating to a hoped-for resurgenr-e of France
in Europe, believed that our relations with France were of paramount
interest to the United States, that we should not risk jeopardizing
them in any way over a French colony which in any event was no
business of ours, and in all good faith thought it was not in our best
interests even to press for reform in Indochina because it might em
barrass our relations with the French.
Indeed, a senior officer in the European Office told me some two
yeare later when war between the French and Vietnamese had begun,
that if he could have had his way American troops would have been
used to restore the French to power in Indochina.
On the other hand, we in the Division of Southeast Asian Affairs
felt that the United States had definite responsibilities with regard
to Indochina. It was our military power that would liberate Indochina
from Japan; the French in Indochina had collaborated with the
Japanese; they had not even attempted to honor their protectorate
responsibilities; there was a strong nationalist movement among the
Vietnamese who had for centuries comprised a proud and independent
country; and future peace and stability in the area depended, we felt,
on a recognition of the natural aspirations of the peoples of the area.
My personal hope was that the French would grant independence to
166
the peoples of Indochina, but I did not feel we should carry our sup-
port of the Indochinese to the point of a break with our ally. France,
weak as she then was, was still a stronger and more valuable ally to
us than Indochina would be if we had to make a choice between the
two and France which was striving to rebuild its strength and regain
its soul needed our help, not a fracturing of relations. But I disagreed
totally with the European Office in its opposition to putting pressure
on the French to do what I felt was not only in our interest but also
actually in the interest of France.
This conflict of viewpoints came to a head a week after President
Roosevelt's death, when a memorandum for President Truman was
prepared in the European Office and sent to the Far Eastern Office
for concurrence. Instead, we prepared an alternative draft memoran-
dum for the President.
CONCERNS OF DIVISION OF SOUTHEAST ASIAN AFFAIRS
Our first concern was that the EUR memorandum did not give the
new President the background information which we thought right-
fully he should have as to President Roosevelt's views or the recent
history of Indochina.
Our second concern was that while we recognized that it would be
contrary to American interests to break with France over the question
of Indochinese independence, we were not prepared to accept as ade-
quate statements about exerting influence in the direction of having
the French liberalize their past policies. We could and we should, we
believed, be very specific and actually use the power we had to try to
secure self-government in Indochina. The French had indicated an
intention to change their prewar policies toward Indochina even
though their various statements, in our opinion, seemed inadequate
to the situation and unlikely to assure peace and stability in the coun-
try. We felt their change in attitude had been due to a realization
of the anti-French independence sentiment among the Indochinese who
must be wooed if French administration was to be successful and, sec-
ondly, to uncertainty as to our attitude add a feeling that our support
for the restoration of Indochina to France could be secured only by
adoption of a more liberal policy. If we informed the French, as pro-
posed in the EUR memorandum, that we would not oppose the return
of Indochina we would negate our influence in securing French policies
consonant with our interests.
We wrote :
Because the liberation of Indochina is, in fact, dependent on American defeat
of Japan, because we are sacrificing blood and treasure to assure peace and
stability in the Far East, postwar maintenance of which will be largely our
responsibility, because without recognition of the dynamic trends toward self-
government among the peoples of Asia, there can be no peace and stability in
the Far East and the peoples of Southeast Asia may embrace ideologies contrary
to our own or develop a pan-Asiatic movement against all western powers,
FE believes — that is. Far Eastern Office— believes that it would not be unreason-
able for the United States to insist that the French give adequate assurances as
to the implementing of policies in Indochina which we consider essential to
assure peace and stability in the Far East.
We urge, therefore, that the policy of the United States should be not to
oppose the restoration of Indochina to France, provided the French give adequate
assurances as to the following :
167
Then we listed five points of which (a) is pertinent here:
(a) Development of a national or federal government to be run for and
increasingly by the Indochinese themselves with no special privileges for French
or other persons who are not inhabitants and citizens of Indochina so that within
the foreseeable future Indochina can be fully self-governing and autonomous
along democratic lines, except in matters of imperial concern in which Indochina
should be a partner in the French Union.
EUROPEAN OFFICE'S VIEWPOINT
The European viewpoint was expressed by Mr. Dunn who, on read-
ing our paper, said he believed it would be better to let the matter drift
rather than base United States policy on the FE version of the Indo-
china paper. He believed that we should draw close to Great Britain
and France the two strongest Western European countries ; we should
attempt to remove sources of friction between France and the United
States and try to allay her apprehensions that we were going to
propose that territory be taken from her.
"We should use our influence to improve the government of Indo-
china," he said, "but should not interfere." He wanted wholehearted
cooperation with France and indicated that he share Bidault's fear
for western civilization as a result of the dominance of Russia, in
Europe.
FRENCH INTEREST
In our view, pressures for specific reforms would not, of course, be
liked by the French but they would not cause a break in our friend-
ship or fundamental support. We felt that what we were seeking was
actually in the French interest as well as our own; self-government
would release the French from the heavy economic drain which Indo-
china had been for years to everyone but the Banque de l'Indochine ;
and with her long association with the Indochinese, France would
easily conserve her cultural influence and would clearly be a favored
country in international economic relations.
Admittedly, the inferiority complex from which France was suf-
fering as a result of the war was turning French thoughts to dreams
of a restored imperial glory rather than to more prosaic problems of
substantive economic and practical power, but I thought this obstacle
not so great as to preclude us from pressing for what seemed to us
both right and sensible.
COMPROMISE QUALITY PAPER
While both Mr. Grew, who was Acting Secretary of State in the
absence of Mr. Stettinius in San Francisco, and Mr. Phillips who was
acting as head of the European Office for Mr. Dunn, agreed with the
policy paper which we submitted, Mr. Grew gave instructions that
a new paper must be drafted on which both the European Office and
the Far Eastern Office would agree. My friend, the late Samuel Reber,
represented EUR during the ensuing discussions and I represented
FE.
The compromise paper was a sincere attempt to reach a policy on
which all could agree as we both recognized that the Department
could have only one policy toward Indochina, not two.
168
Basically, we agreed that the President should be furnished perti-
nent facts which either EUR or FE thought important ; but instead
of conditioning nonopposition to the return of Indochina to France
upon the receiving of assurance on five major points, we recommended
that Ave approach the French, explain our interest and concern, and
ask the French to give some positive indication of their intentions
with respect to each of the five points.
It was certainly my view that if we had these answers we would be
in a much better position to determine future policy, and that this
technique would alert the French to our interest but without threat
or promise. I think it must have been a good compromise paper. My
own staff was horrified that I had abandoned all we had struggled for,
while Jimmy Dunn sent a scorching wire from San Francisco whither
Bill Phillips had forwarded the draft, totally repudiating any part
of the compromise. The suggested inquiry was never sent to the
French.
SITUATION IN INDOCHTNA CHANGED WHEN JAPAN SURRENDERED
A few weeks later Japan surrendered and the situation in Indo-
china changed rapidly. The Vietnamese tried to take over all Viet-
namese territory and disarm the Japanese before the Allies should
arrive in Indochina. They were successful in establishing a working
administration in the two northern provinces of Tonkin and Annam,
but factional dissension among various independence groups in Cochin
China minimized the effectiveness of their administration in that
province. Nevertheless, for 20 days the Provisional Vietnamese Gov-
ernment ruled all the territory inhabited by Vietnamese. Then the
British placed the French back in power in the area they controlled
south of the 16th parallel. In the north the Vietnamese remained in
power by arrangement with the Nationalist Chinese who were there
to secure the disarming of the Japanese north of the 16th parallel.
NEGOTIATIONS BETWEEN FRENCH AND VIETNAMESE
With French forces back in Indochina and with all potential lever-
age gone, there was little that the United States could do to alter
the outcome. We watched the negotiations between French and Viet-
namese from the sidelines, encouraged when at times it seemed as if
a liberal arrangement would be worked out, sorrowfully when both
sides would breach agreements that had been made and when it grad-
ually became apparent that as the French brought more military
forces into the country their willingness to concede self-rule corre-
spondingly decreased. I think both EUR and FE hoped that the
French would reach an effective agreement with the Vietnam Pro-
visional Government; but late in 1946 a concern about Communist
expansion began to be evident in the Department.
We are reaping today, in my opinion, and so are all Vietnamese,
Laotians, and Cambodians, the tragedy of our fixation on the theory
of monolithic, aggressive communism that began to develop at this
time and to affect our objective analyses of certain problems.
T haATe always been convinced that if the French had worked sin-
cerely with Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam would have evolved with a Com-
169
mimist regime that, it is true, but a regime that followed the interests
of Vietnam first. There would have been no domination by China
after China became Communist and cooperation with the Soviet Union
would have been primarily as an instrument to offset Chinese pressures.
I have never met an American, be he military, OSS, diplomat, or
journalist, who had met Ho Chi Minh who did not reach the same
belief: that Ho Chi Minh was first and foremost a Vietnamese na-
tionalist. He was also a Communist and believed that Communism
offered the best hope for the Vietnamese people. But his loyalty was
to his people. When I was in Indochina it was striking how the top
echelon of competent French officials held almost unanimously the
same view.
Actually, there was no alternative to an agreement with Ho Chi
Minh or to a crushing of the nationalist groundswell which my own
observations convinced me could not be done. Any other government
recognized by the French would of necessity be puppets of the French
and incapable of holding the loyalty of the Vietnamese people.
CONCERN ABOUT COMMUNIST DOMINATION OF VIETNAMESE GOVERNMENT
As Department concern about the Communist domination of the
Vietnamese Government became more apparent and more uncritical
we began, I felt, to allow our fears of such domination to overrule
our better judgment; we let the nationalist feelings of the country
recede in importance and we ignored the father figure that Ho Chi
Minh was becoming for most Vietnamese. The French seemed not
adverse to taking advantage of our increasing preoccupation with
Communism.
A telegram from our consul at Hanoi, James O'Sullivan, at the
end of December offered some sound cautionary advice :
"French concern over Communism," he concluded, "may well be
devised to divert Department's attention from French policy in Indo-
china."
I always felt that we could see the situation in Southeast Asia more
objectively than the British, the French, and the Dutch because we
could, until the fear of Communism affected objectivity, analyze prob-
lems without the handicap of self-interest, prejudice, pride or domestic
politics. I struggled to preserve Siam from excessive British pressures
at the conclusion of the war.
IF FRANCE HAD GRANTED INDEPENDENCE TO VIETNAM
As to Indochina and the Netherlands East Indies, I felt it essential
that these countries be granted the political independence they longed
for, that by making such a grant, France, for instance, would in fact
develop close ties with Vietnam because the Vietnamese had always
great respect and liking for French culture and many, including Ho
Chi Minh, would have liked to maintain warm ties with France and
to have French advisers in posts where foreign expert help was needed.
Voluntary elimination of hated foreign control would have per-
mitted happy and mutually beneficial relations to develop between the
two countries. This was in fact the policy France successfully followed
later in West Africa, but the French people felt a deep affront to their
170
pride at the thought of giving up any sovereignty or control over Indo-
china just as later they suffered similar imagined loss of face over
Algeria.
t still believe that had the French been willing to grant independence
to Vietnam in 1946 they could have worked out an arrangement with
the Vietnam government that would have protected their cultural in-
fluence and left them with an obvious advantage over all other nations
in economic dealings with Vietnam.
It would have taken a greatness they did not then possess, and it
would have taken a breadth of vision to see beyond the spiritual ashes
from which they were rising, as Jean Monnet later had vision for Eu-
rope, but the failure to see their own true interest, misplaced ideas of
prestige and glory, pressures from the Banque de l'Indochine, pres-
sures from petty officials and those French who had settled in Indo-
china—not the best type of Frenchmen generally, domestic politics and
the indecision arising from unstable government at home — all these
conspired to make the French intransigent at the time. Whether if the
concern about the extension of a monolithic Communism had not arisen
at that particular moment of history the story would have ended dif-
ferently, I do not know.
I was away from Washington for nearly 3 months from Novem-
ber 1946, to February 1947, because soon after leaving Indochina at
the end of December I was ordered to go to Canberra as Adviser to the
American Delegate to the South Pacific Conference. But my 2 months
in Southeast Asia had confirmed, I felt, my earlier ideas and I was
particularly heartsick at the outbreak of war between the French and
the Vietnamese.
HO CHI MINH's "dIKECT COMMUNIST CONNECTION"
On my return to the Department in mid-February, I found that a
telegram had been sent to Paris earlier that month in an effort to exert
influence toward securing a settlement with the Vietnamese. That tele-
gram had, however, spoken sharply against the danger of Ho Chi
Minh's "direct Communist connection" and our opposition to seeing a
colonial administration supplanted by an administration controlled by
the Kremlin. This was impeccable theory with which one could not
quarrel, but it was a prejudgment of the facts for which I could find
no support. So far as I was aware, no evidence to support the assump-
tions of a direct tie to the Kremlin had ever been received and it com-
pletely disregarded Ho Chi Minh's intense nationalism.
TELEGRAM OP MAY 13, 1947
The French presently indicated that they were seeking true repre-
sentatives of the Vietnamese with whom they could negotiate. We
were deeply concerned in my division because we felt that would be
futile and any resulting government would be a puppet of the French.
We determined to make one final try and in a telegram that was sent
on May 13, 1947, we spoke of the seven new nations that were in the
process of achieving or struggling to achieve independence or auton-
omy in southern and southeastern Asia, and that in view of the great
171
strides toward autonomy made by other people in this area it could be
dangerous if the French- Vietnamese arrangements accorded less
autonomy.
We said that we felt the best safeguard against Communist control
or antiwestern, pan- Asiatic tendencies would be close association be-
tween the newly autonomous peoples and the countries with which
they had long been associated, but such association had to be volun-
tary if it was to be lasting.
A protraction of the situation then existing in Indochina could only
destroy the basis for voluntary cooperation and leave a legacy of bit-
terness that would irrevocably alienate the Vietnamese from France
and those values represented by France and other western democra-
cies. We were inescapably concerned with the situation in the Far
East generally and with those developments in Indochina which could
have a profound effect on the situation. We hoped that the French
would be generous in their attempt to find an early solution which,
by recognizing the legitimate desires of the Vietnamese, would restore
peace and deprive antidemocratic forces of a powerful weapon.
The entire telegram has also accepted the French thesis that it was
the Vietnamese who initiated the fighting between the two countries.
It seemed to me important to redress somewhat the onesided propa-
ganda which the French had maintained and at least make clear the
Vietnamese view of developments.
For the information of our ambassador, but with authority to re-
peat to the French if the occasion warranted, we said, frankly, that
the French position that the fighting which began December 19 was
the result of an initial Vietnamese attack seemed to us dangerously
onesided as it ignored Colonel Debes' attack on Haiphong on Novem-
ber 23 and the "understandable Vietnamese contention that a stand
had to be made at some point in view of the steady French encroach-
ments after March 6 on the authority and territory of Vietnam," and
we cited as examples the establishment of the Cochin Chinese Republic,
the occupation of southern Annam and the Moi Plateau, and the
Dalat plan for a French-dominated federation to which Vietnam
would be subservient.
Finally, we expressed our concern lest the French efforts to find "true
representatives of Vietnam" with whom to negotiate might result in
the creation of an impotent puppet government along the lines of
the Cochin China regime or that restoration of Bao Dai might be
attempted.
I have referred to this telegram at some length because it was the
last action regarding Indochina with which I was associated, because
it summarized reasonably well, I think, what we had long been say-
ing within the Department, and because it reflected also my own ob-
servations in the field and the need to understand the Vietnamese
view of developments as well as the French view.
AMERICAN INFLUENCE NIL
As we had anticipated, American "influence" in the situation was
nil. Two months later I transferred from the Department to the Amer-
ican Mission for Aid to Greece where I was the first political adviser
83-605—73 12
172
to Governor Giswold and later liaison between the civilian side of the
mission and General Van Fleet.
I had no further responsibility in connection with Indochmese af-
fairs or personal knowledge of subsequent developments, except as
I occasionally ran into people.
(Mr. Moffat's prepared statement follows :)
Statement by Abbot Low Moffat, foemeb Chief, Division of Southeast Asian
Affatbs, Depabtment of State
I have been asked to present a statement of my recollections of the handling
of the Indochina problem in the Department of State during the immediate
postwar period, 1945-1947, at which time I was Chief of the Division of South-
east Asian Affairs.
I would like to congratulate the Committee on the excellent Study No. 2
prepared by Robert M. Blum of your staff. The two papers in the Study are
extremely competent summaries, it seems to me, and I doubt that I can add
anything" except perhaps to place a slightly different emphasis on certain points.
It is not possible to understand some of the developments in 1945 without
knowledge of what happened before. Until the spring of 1944 the Office of Far
Eastern Affairs had no jurisdiction over those areas of the Far East which
were colonies of European countries, important though those colonies might
be in Far Eastern policy questions. The British Commonwealth desk and the
Western European desk in the Office of European Affairs handled the problems
and policies concerning all British, French, Dutch, and Portuguese colonies as
Integral parts of relations with the mother countries. In the spring of 1944,
however, there was established in the Office of Far Eastern Affairs a new Division
of Southwest Pacific Affairs, the name of which was later changed to Division
of Southeast Asian Affairs as our major activities clearly related to Southeast
Asia other than the Philippines. To this Division was given primary jurisdiction
of matters relating to Thailand and concurrent jurisdiction with the appropriate-
European desk of matters relating to the European colonies in Southeast Asia
and in the Pacific Ocean. The significant word in that statement is "concurrent".
It meant that neither the European nor the Far Eastern Divisions had the
power to act without the concurrence of the other so that whichever Division
might be opposed to affirmative or innovative action could prevent such action ;
and in practice moreover it proved almost impossible to raise conflicting views
for resolution at higher levels as we were directed to agree before consideration
would be given to our recommendations.
Lawrence Salisbury was named chief of the new Division and on his resig-
nation from the Department about two months later I was designated to succeed
him and served in that capacity until July, 1947.
There had been many hopes and generalities uttered about the postwar world
including not least the Atlantic Charter, and the colonial powers from time to
time spoke vaguely of more self-government for their colonies after the war.
As we considered the prewar nationalist movements in Southeast Asia and
studied such reports as we then had from the area, we reached the conclusion
that nationalist sentiment was becoming an important force in Southeast Asia.
We felt that not only to accomplish self-government which traditional American
policy lias always favored, but also to capture the nationalist movements in behalf
of the war effort our allies should be urged to be specific in what they proposed
to do after the war. Our division prepared, therefore, a briefing paper for the
President's use at the Second Quebec Conference in September, 1944, which was
initialed by all the appropriate Divisions and Offices and was signed by the
Secretary of State, Mr. Hull, on September 8. I would like to quote from that
memorandum as it appears in Mr. Hull's Memoirs because it states our govern-
ment's goal at that time and because of its reference to trusteeships.
"In this [memorandum] we suggested the value of 'early, dramatic, and con-
certed announcements by the nations concerned making definite commitments
as to the future of the regions of Southeast Asia'. We added :
" ' It would be especially helpful if such concerted announcements could include
(1) specific dates when independence of complete (dominion) self-government
will be accorded, (2) specific steps to be taken to develop native capacity for self-
rule, and (3) a pledge of economic autonomy and equality of economic treat-
ment toward other nations.
173
" 'Such announcements might well be accompanied by ... a pledge to establish
a regional commission. . . . The value of such concerted announcements would
be still further enhanced if each of the colonial powers concerned would pledge
a formal declaration of trusteeship under an international organization for the
period of tutelage; but it might be unwise for the United States to attempt
to insist upon such a declaration of trusteeship by one country if similar declara-
tions could not be secured from the others. In addition to their great value as
psychological warfare, such announcements would appear to be directly in line
with American postwar interest.' "
So far as I know no effort was made to seek such concerted announcements
presumably because of the implacable opposition of Mr. Churchill to the trustee-
ship principle and to any discu ssion of British territories. Yet as Mr. Hull
explains.
"It might be thought that we were presumptuous in seeking to present our
ideas to the British, French, and Dutch Governments as to what they should do
with their own Pacific possessions. We had. however, two rights to take such
action. One was the fact That the liberation of those possessions would not have
been achieved — and possibly never could have been achieved — except by the
United States forces. The other was our interest in seeing that peace in the
Pacific, restored by our forces, should continue. And we could not help believing
that the indefinite continuance of the British, Dutch, and French possessions in
the Orient in a state of dependence provided a number of foci for future trouble
and perhaps war. Permanent peace could not be assured unless these possessions
were started on the road to independence, after the example of the Philippines.
We believed that we were taking the long-range view, and that a lasting peace
in the Pacific was of greater ultimate benefit to Britain, France, and the Nether-
lands— as well as to the whole world — than the possible immediate benefits of
holding on to colonies."
While the European Divisions had installed the memorandum because, I be-
lieve, of its importance in psychological warfare, I did not feel that they were
entirely happy with the more basic objective. From then on and as more and more
information was received, one of our major tasks, during the whole time that I
was with the Division of Southeast Asian Affairs, was to try to convince the
European Divisions of the mounting groundswell of nationalism which was en-
gulfing all Southeast Asia and indeed, before I left the Division, Southern Asia
as well.
Their concern, of course, focussed on our relations with the major European
powers ; rather naturally they tended to consider the colonial problems in South-
east Asia as of relatively minor importance. I well recall one senior officer asking
me one day ''Why are you concerning yourself with Indonesia ; its only a Dutch
colony?" There seemed to be little understanding of what was happening in
Southeast Asia. Time and again the nationalist movements were characterized as
simply the effect of Japanese propaganda. There was also, I felt, little concept of
the effect on the people of Southeast Asia of seeing the Europeans driven from the
area by the Japanese, and no thought seemed to be given to the effect of the mas-
sive, indeed total dislocation of the economic and social life of these people under
the impact of the changes wrought by the war. We felt strongly that the colonial
powers could not pick up where they had been forced to leave off or even with
an allowance for four years of political development. We became convinced that
during the four years of war nationalist sentiment had progressed faster and
farther than it would have evolved during twenty or more years of peace.
As is well known President Roosevelt during 1943 and the first half of 1944
expressed frequently the view that Indochina should be taken from the French
at the end of the war and placed under international trusteeship pending full
independence. As late as February, 1944, the Department in a memorandum to the
President proposed to proceed on the assumption that French armed forces would
be employed to some extent in military operations to free Indochina from the
Japanese, and that it would be desirable in the civil affairs administration of the
country to employ French nationals having an intimate knowledge of the country.
The President endorsed this memorandum simply and succinctly : "No French
help in Indochina — country on trusteeship".
We in the Southeast Asia Division strongly favored the President's desire for
Indochina and I hoped that he had some as yet secret plan by which he expected
to effect such trusteeship for we were unable to see how it could be implemented
without applying the same policy to the British and Dutch colonies in the area.
I felt therefore that we should at least voice our reservation which I did in the
174
memorandum sent to the President by Mr. Hull on September 8 from which I
have quoted. Mr. Hull wrote in his Memoirs that the President warmly approved
the ideas in the memorandum.
During the weeks following the Second Quebec Conference British support of
a French return to Indochina became increasingly apparent. A large French
military mission was attached to the South East Asia Command (SEAC) and the
British SOE (corresponding to our OSS), who were actively engaged in under-
cover operations in Indochina, were ordered by the Foreign Office to devote their
efforts solely to the French and to have nothing to do with Annamite or other
native organizations. These and other facts were called to the President's atten-
tion in November together with an OSS statement that the British and Dutch
had arrived at agreement regarding the future of Southeast Asia and were now
about to bring the French into the picture. The President reacted sharply. Ameri-
can approval must not be given to any French military mission, he directed ; all
our people and also the British, Dutch, and French must understand that we
expected to be consulted on the future of Indochina ; and then the significant
remark insofar as trusteeship was concerned : "We have made no final decisions
on the future of Indochina".
The Conference at Yalta took place some weeks later. Shortly after the Presi-
dent's return I had lunch with Charles Taussig who was working on Caribbean
matters for the President and was deeply concerned with colonial problems. He
was to have breakfast with the President the next day and since we had heard
nothing promised to inquire what if any decisions had been made with regard
to Indochina. He reported that the President said that rather than interna-
tional trusteeship for Indochina he had agreed that France might be the trustee.
On April 3, however, the Secretary of State issued a statement with the Presi-
dent's approval that the United States, as a result of the Yalta talks, looked to
trusteeship as a postwar arrangement only for territories taken from the enemy
and such territories as might voluntarily be placed under trusteeship. As the
French clearly had no intention of voluntarily placing Indochina under trustee-
ship, Mr. Stettinius' statement marked the public end of Mr. Roosevelt's earlier
hope for a trusteeship for Indochina.
As the war approached its climax, the French, through the British, pressed
harder for American help in the recovery of Indochina from the Japanese and
for an active part in such operation, and also for a formal civil affairs agreement
between the United States and France relating to the military administration to
be established as the Japanese were driven out. As late as January, 1945, the
President was adamant that he did not want the United States to be mixed up
in any decisions affecting the future of Indochina ; those were for postwar. And
he did not want to get mixed up in any military effort to liberate Indochina
from the Japanese. But the French did not give up. When in March Japan ousted
the collaborationist regime in Indochina and took over direct control several
thousand French troops briefly opposed the Japanese before crossing into
China and the French asked for supplies and assistance from the 14th Air Force
in China. Although the President disapproved the release of a statement sug-
gested by the Department explaining that the United States would give such
help as it could consistent with the operations and plans to which it was com-
mitted, the Department and the Joint Chiefs authorized the 14th Air Force, in
aid of the French, to undertake operations against the Japanese in Indochina
provided such action did not interfere with other planned operations.
During this period we had increasingly the impression that the European
Office favored the outright return of Indochina to France and had little real
concern about autonomy or self-rule or even of increased native participation in
the government. An indication of this arose when a briefing memorandum
should, we felt, be prepared for the President for the Yalta Conference. We knew
we could not get concurrence in a statement about Indochina that would meet
our views, so we circulated again the memorandum signed by Mr. Hull on
September 8. This time the European Divisions declined to initial the document
they had initiated less than six months before. No briefing paper concerning
Southeast Asia accompanied the President to Yalta so far as I know.
The net result of all this was that as the war in Europe ended the Department
had no agreed policy regarding the future of Indochina. The European Office
and the Western Europe Division, confronted with the major problems relating
to a hoped-for resurgence of France in Europe, believed that our relations with
France were of paramount interest to the United States; that we should not
175
risk jeopardizing them in any way over a French colony which in any event
was no business of ours ; and in all good faith thought it was not in our best
interests even to press for reform in Indochina because it might embarrass our
relations with the French. Indeed, a senior officer in the European Office told
me some two years later when war between the French and Vietnamese had
begun, that if he could have had his way American troops would have been used
to restore the French to power in Indochina.
On the other hand, we in the Division of Southeast Asian Affairs felt that the
United States had definite responsibilities with regard to Indochina. It was our
military power that would liberate Indochina from Japan ; the French in Indo-
china had collaborated with the Japanese ; they had not even attempted to
honor their protectorate responsibilities ; there was a strong nationalist move-
ment among the Vietnamese who had for centuries comprised a proud and in-
dependent country ; and future peace and stability in the area depended, we felt,
on a recognition of the natural aspirations of the peoples of the area. My per-
sonal hope was that the French would grant independence to the peoples of
Indochina, but I did not feel we should carry our support of the Indochinese to
the point of a break with our ally. France, weak as she then was, was still a
stronger and more valuable ally to us than Indochina would be if we had to
make a choice between the two and France which was striving to rebuild its
strength and regain its soul needed our help, not a fracturing of relations. But
I disagreed totally with the European Office in its opposition to putting pressure
on the French to do what I felt was not only in our interest but also actually in
the interest of France.
This conflict of viewpoints came to a head a week after President Roosevelt's
death when a memorandum for President Truman was prepared in the European
Office and sent to the Far Eastern Office for concurrence. As I recall the occasion
I was handed a copy of this memorandum about 5 o'clock on a Friday after-
noon with the request that our approval or comments be ready for a meeting of
the top level Staff Committee the next morning at 11. We did succeed in having
our comments and an alternative draft memorandum for the President ready next
day but not in time for the meeting, and more than a month elapsed before in
fact the Staff Committee considered the issue. Then Mr. Grew who was Acting
Secretary in the absence of Mr. Stettinius in San Francisco told the group that
he had two papers concerning Indochina, one from EUR, one from FE ; that he
had read both ; and that he concurred in the paper from FE. He turned to Mr.
William Phillips who was acting as head of the European Office for Mr. Dunn
who was also in San Francisco and asked what he thought. Mr. Phillips replied
that he had read both papers and that he too agreed with the Far Eastern Office
memorandum. Mr. Grew then asked Mr. Phillips to arrange that one policy paper
be prepared on which both the European Office and the Far Eastern Office would
agree. I represented FE in the ensuing discussions and my friend, the late Samuel
Reber, represented EUR.
Our first concern in the Southeast Asia Division had been that the EUR mem-
orandum did not give the new President the background information which we
thought rightfully he should have as to President Roosevelt's views or the
recent history of Indochina.
Our second concern was that while we recognized that it would be contrary
to American interests to break with France over the question of Indochinese
independence, we were not prepared to accept as adequate statements about
exerting influence in the direction of having the French liberalize their past
policies. We could and we should, we believed, be very specific and actually use
the power we had to try to secure self-government in Indochina. The French had
indicated an intention to change their prewar policies towards Indochina even
though their various statements, in our opinion, seemed inadequate to the
situation and unlikely to assure peace and stability in the country. We felt
their change in attitude had been due to a realization of the anti-French in-
dependence sentiment among the Indochinese who must be wooed if French
administration was to be successful and secondly to uncertainty as to our
attitude and a feeling that our support for the restoration of Indochina to France
could be secured only by adoption of a more liberal policy. If we informed the
French, as proposed in the EUR memorandum, that we would not oppose the
return of Indochina we would negative our influence in securing French policies
consonant with our interests. We wrote :
"Because the liberation of Indochina is, in fact, dependent on American defeat
of Japan ; because we are sacrificing blood and treasure to assure peace and
176
stability in the Far East, postwar maintenance of which will be largely our
responsibility ; because without recognition of the dynamic trends towards self-
government among the peoples of Asia there can be no peace and stability in the
Far East and the peoples of Southeast Asia may embrace ideologies contrary to
our own or develop a pan-Asiatic movement against all western powers, FE
believes that it would not be unreasonable for the United States to insist that
the French give adequate assurances as to the implementing of policies in Indo-
china which we consider essential to assure peace and stability in the Far East.
We urge, therefore, that the policy of the United States should be not to oppose
the restoration of Indochina to France, provided the French give adequate assur-
ances as to the following :"
We then listed five points of which a and d are pertinent here.
"a. Development of a national or federal government to be run for and
increasingly by the Indochinese themselves with no special privileges for
French or other persons who are not inhabitants and citizens of Indochina so
that within the foreseeable future Indochina can be fully self-governing and
autonomous along democratic lines, except in matters of imperial concern in
which Indochina should be a partner in the French Union.
d. Acceptance of a frontier between Indochina and Thailand, to be determined
by an impartial, international commission."
The EUR viewpoint was expressed by Mr. Dunn who on reading our paper said
he believed it would be better to let the matter drift rather than base United
States policy on the FE version of the Indochina paper. He believed that we
should draw close to Great Britain and France the two strongest western Euro-
pean countries ; we should attempt to remove source of friction between France
and the United States and try to allay her apprehensions that we were going
to propose that territory be taken from her. "We should use our influence to
improve the government of Indochina," he said, "but should not interfere." He
wanted wholehearted cooperation with France and indicated that he share
Bidault's fear for western civilization as a result of the dominance of Russia in
Europe.
In our view pressures for specific reforms would not, of course, be liked by
the French but they would not cause a break in our friendship or fundamental
support. We felt that what we were seeking was actually in the French interest
as well as our own : self-government would release the French from the heavy
economic drain which Indochina had been for years to everyone but the Banque
de l'lndochine ; and with her long association with the Indochinese France would
easily conserve her cultural influence and would clearly be a favored country
in international economic relations. Admittedly, the inferiority complex from
which France was suffering as a result of the war was turning French thoughts
to dreams of a restored imperial glory rather than to more prosaic problems of
substantive economic and practical power, but I thought this obstacle not so
great as to preclude us from pressing for what seemed to us both right and
sensible.
A practical illustration of what I had in mind was afforded some months
later in our relations with France over Siam, previewed in point d above. In
1040 the Thai overran by military force substantial territory in Indochina. The
Japanese forced the French to cede this territory to Thailand. It was the Ameri-
can position that territory seized with Japanese aid must be returned, but
without prejudice to future territorial adjustments. These border lands had
been a source of friction for years. They had been acquired by the French from
Siam piecemeal, essentially at the point of a gun, during the heyday of colonial
expansion. While fully legalized by treaties of cession the Siamese always felt
that the lands taken by the French belonged to them. When France was weak
ther took back what they felt was their own.
I felt strongly that for future peace in the area the border should be adjusted
and delimited if possible on its merits and not on legalistic arguments, and that
this delimitation should be by some international group that would hear both
sides and then make a decision that both would accent. I suggested informally
by the French Minister in Washington that as part of or immediately upon agree-
ment bv Siam to return the territories the French asrree to an examination of
the border by an international tribunal. He was horrified; this reflected on
177
French honor; they might adjust an island here or there in a river channel, but
they would not let an international tribunal suggest what the boundary of
French territory should be. But I was quite sure that the Siamese would not
return the territories unless they received some such assurance, so I kept pressing
every so often. Each new suggestion was greeted with an "Impossible !" And then
one year and a day later the French referred to my first suggestion and agreed
to it; discussions got under way ; a treaty was signed ; the Siamese returned (he
territories ; and an international Conciliation Commission was established. I
might add that the Conciliation Commission upheld the French contentions re-
garding the border; but what I am trying to illustrate is that where there was
something at stake that the French wanted it was possible to exert pressure and
secure affirmative results without jeopardising relations. I have always felt the
same could have been accomplished in greater or less degree with respect to
Indochina.
The compromise paper that Sam Reber and I agreed upon was a sincere
attempt to reach a policy on which all could agree as we both recognized that
the Department could have only one policy toward Indochina, not two. Basically,
we agreed that the President should be furnished pertinent facts which either
EUR or FE thought important ; but instead of conditioning non-opposition, to the
return of Indochina to France upon the receiving of assurance on five major
points, we recommended that we approach the French, explain our interest and
concern, and ask the French to give some positve indication of their intentions
with respect to each of the five points. It was certainly my view that if we had
the answers we would be in a much better position to determine future policy.
and that this technique would alert the French to our interest but without threat
or promise. I think it must have been a good compromise paper. My own staff
were horrified that I had abandoned all we had struggled for; while Jimmy
Dunn sent a scorching wire from San Francisco, writer Bill Phillips had for-
warded the draft totally repudiating any part of the compromise. The suggested
inquiry was never directed to the French.
A few weeks later Japan surrendered and the situation in Indochina changed
rapidly. The Vietnamese tried to take over all Vietnamese territory and disarm
the Japanese before the Allies should arrive in Indochina. They were successful
in establishing a working administration in the two northern provinces of Tonkin
and Annum, but factional dissension among various independence groups in
Cochin China minimized the effectiveness of their administration in that prov-
ince. Nevertheless for twenty days the Provisional Vietnam Government ruled
all the territory inhabited by Vietnamese. Then the British placed the French
back in power in the area they controlled south of the 16th parallel. In the north
the Vietnamese remained in power by arrangement with the nationalist Chinese
who were there to secure the disarming of the Japanese north of the 16th
parallel.
With French forces back in Indochina and with all potential leverage gone,
there was little that the United States could do to alter the outcome. We watched
the negotiations between French and Vietnamese from the sidelines, encouraged
when at times it seemed as if a liberal arrangement would be worked out, sor-
rowfully when both sides would breach agreements that had been made and when
it gradually became apparent that as the French brought more military forces
into the country their willingness to concede self-rule correspondingly decreased.
I think both EUR and FE hoped that the French would reach an effective agree-
ment with the Vietnam Provisional Government, but late in 1946 a concern about
communist expansion began to be evident in the Department.
We are reaping today, in my opinion, and so are all Vietnamese, Laotians, and
Cambodians, the tragedy of our fixation on the theory of monolithic aggressive
communism that began to develop at this time and to affect our objective
analyses of certain problems. I have always been convinced that if the French
had worked sincerely with Ho Chi Minh Vietnam would have evolved with a
communist regime, but a regime that followed the interests of Vietnam first.
There would have been no domination by China after China became communist
and cooperation with the Soviet Union would have been primarily as an in-
strument to offset Chinese pressures.
I have never met an American, be he military. OSS. diplomat, or journalist,
who had met Ho Chi Minh who did not reach the same belief: that Ho Chi
Minh was first and foremost a Vietnamese nationalist. He was also a communist
and believed that communism offered the best hope for the Vietnamese people.
178
But his lovaltv was to his people. When I was in Indochina it was striking how
the top echelon of competent French officials held almost unanimously the same
view.
Actually there was no alternative to an agreement with Ho Chi Minh or to a
crushing of the nationalist grounds well which my own observations convinced
me could not be done. Any other government recognized by the French would
of necessity be puppets of the French and incapable of holding the loyalty of the
Vietnamese people.
As Department concern about the communist domination of the Vietnam Gov-
ernment became more apparent and more uncritical we began, I felt, to allow
fears of such domination to overrule better judgment; we let the nationalist
feelings of the country recede in importance and we ignored the father figure that
Ho Chi Minh was becoming for most Vietnamese. The French seemed not adverse
to taking advantage of our increasing preoccupation with communism.
A telegram from our able consul at Hanoi, James O'Sullivan, at the end of
December offered some sound cautionary advice. He thought it "peculiar" that
the French should only now become concerned about the communists in Hanoi.
To his certain knowledge, they had known for years that Nguyen Ai Quoc and
Ho Chi Minh were one and the same person and that he stood high in the Third
International, and for over a year they had suspected that Ho Chi Minh might
be receiving instructions from Moscow. He further thought it was "very peculiar"
that French concern should be brought to the Department's attention at the very
moment they were apparently beginning to shift their program in Tonkin and
when they might be preparing to force the Vietnam Government to collaborate
on French terms or to establish a puppet government in its place. "French con-
cern over Communism," he concluded, "may well be devised to divert Depart-
ment's attention from French policy in Indochina."
I always felt that we could see the situation in Southeast Asia more objec-
tively than the British, the French, and the Dutch because we could, until
the fear of communism affected objectivity, analyze problems without the hand-
icap of self-interest, prejudice, pride, or domestic politics. I struggled to pre-
serve Siam from excessive British pressures at the conclusion of the war and
was convinced that we were serving not only the Siamese interest but also the
British interest, a view they have, I believe, long since accepted. As to Indo-
china and the Netherlands East Indies I felt it essential that these countries
be granted the political independence they longed for ; that by making such a
grant France, for instance, would in fact develop close ties with Vietnam
because the Vietnamese had always great respect and liking for French culture
and many, including Ho Chi Minh, would have liked to maintain warm ties
with France and to have French advisers in posts where foreign expert help
was needed. Voluntary elimination of hated foreign control would have per-
mitted happy and mutually beneficial relations to develop between the two
countries. This was in fact the policy France successfully followed later in West
Africa, but the French people felt a deep affront to their pride at the thought
of giving up any sovereignty or control over Indochina just as later they suf-
fered similar imagined loss of face over Algeria.
I still believe that had the French been willing to grant independence to
Vietnam in 1946 they could have worked out arrangements with the Vietnam
Government that would have protected their cultural influence and left them
with an obvious advantage over all other nations in economic dealings with
Vietnam. It would have taken a greatness they did not then possess, and it
would have taken a breadth of vision to see beyond the spiritual ashes from
which they were rising, as Jean Monnet later had vision for Europe, but the
failure to see their own true interest, misplaced ideas of prestige and glory,
pressures from the Banque de l'lndochine: pressures from petty officials and
those French who had settled in Indochina — not the best type of Frenchman
generally, domestic politics, and the indecision arising from unstable govern-
ments at home — all these conspired to make the French intransigent at the time.
Whether if the concern about thp extension of a monolithic communism had not
arisen at that particular moment of history the story would have ended dif-
ferently I do not know.
I was away from Washington for nearly three months from November 1946 to
February 1947 because soon after leaving Indochina at the end of December
I was ordered to go to Canberra as Adviser to the American delegate to the
South Pacific Conference. But my two months in Southeast Asia had confirmed.
179
I felt, my earlier ideas and I was particularly heartsick at the outbreak of war
between the French and Vietnamese.
On my return to the Department in mid-February I found that a telegram
had been sent to Paris earlier that month in an effort to exert influence towards
securing a settlement with the Vietnamese. That telegram had, however, spoken
sharply against the danger of Ho Chi Minn's "direct Communist connection"
and our opposition to seeing a colonial administration supplanted by an admin-
istration controlled by the Kremlin. This was impeccable theory with which
one could not quarrel, but it was a prejudgment of the facts for which I could
find no support. So far as I was aware no evidence to support the assumption of
a direct tie to the Kremlin had ever been received and it completely disre-
garded Ho Chi Minn's intense nationalism.
The French presently indicated tbat they were seeking "true representatives"
of the Vietnamese with whom they could negotiate. We were deeply concerned
in my Division because we felt that would be futile and any resulting government
would be a puppet of the French. We determined to make one final try and in
a telegram that was sent on May 13, 1947, we spoke of the seven new nations
that were in the process of achieving or struggling to achieve independence or
autonomy in southern and southeastern Asia, and that in view of the great
strides towards autonomy made by other people in this area it could be dangerous
if the French-Vietnamese arrangements accorded less autonomy.
We said that we felt the best safeguard against communist control or anti-
western, pan-asiatic tendencies would be close association between the newly
autonomous peoples and the countries with which they had long been associated,
but such association had to be voluntary if it was to be lasting and achieve
positive results. A protraction of the situation then existing in Indochina could
only destroy the basis for voluntary cooperation and leave a legacy of bitterness
that would irrevocably alienate the Vietnamese from France and those values
represented by France and other western democracies. We were inescapably
concerned with the situation in the Far East generally and with those develop-
ments in Indochina which could have a profound effect on that situation. We
hoped that the French would be generous in their attempt to find an early solu-
tion which, by recognizing the legitimate desires of the Vietnamese, would restore
peace and deprive anti-democratic forces of a powerful weapon.
The earlier telegram had also accepted the French thesis that it was the Viet-
namese who initiated the fighting between the two countries. It seemed to
me important to redress somewhat the one-sided propaganda which the French
had maintained and at least make clear the Vietnamese view of developments.
For the information of our Ambassador, but with authority to repeat to the
French if the occasion warranted, we said frankly that the French position
that the fighting which began December 19 was the result of an initial Viet-
namese attack seemed to us dangerously one-sided as it ignored Col. Debes' at-
tack on Haiphong on November 23 and the "understandable Vietnamese con-
tention that a stand had to be made at some point in view of the steady French
encroachments after March 6 on the authority and territory of Vietnam," and
we cited as examples the establishment of the Cochin Chinese Republic, the occu-
pation of southern Annam and the Moi Plateau, and the Dalat plan for a
French-dominated Federation to which Vietnam would be subservient.
Finally, we expressed our concern lest the French efforts to find "true repre-
sentatives of Vietnam" with whom to negotiate might result in the creation of
an impotent puppet government along the lines of the Cochin China regime or
that restoration of Baodai might be attempted.
I have referred to this telegram at some length because it was the last action
regarding Indochina with which I was associated, because it summarized reason-
ably well, I think, what we had long been saying within the Department, and
because it reflected also my own observations in the field and the need to under-
stand the Vietnamese view of developments as well as the French view.
As we had anticipated American "influence" in the situation was nil. Two
months later I transferred from the Department to the American Mission for
Aid to Greece where I was at first political advisor to Governor Griswold and
later liasion between the civilian side of the Mission and General Van Fleet.
I had no further responsibility in connection with Indochinese affairs or personal
knowledge of subsequent developments.
The Chairman. I suspect you kept up with the developments pretty
closely.
180
Mr. Moffat, your account and Mr. White's really leave me with a
feeling of a kind of a Greek tragedy. After all your efforts, the report
from Mr. White, we find ourselves in a situation that is so dangerous,
and has already been so costly, that it is almost impossible to express
my feelings about it. There is no point, I guess, in always thinking
about what might have been. You have related, both of you, such
significant aspects of how we became committed that I think it would
be very valuable if we could get the attention of our government upon
how we became committed, in order to better evaluate the wisdom of
continuing to stay there.
CREATION OF PUPPET GOVERNMENT
Your reference to the French creating a puppet government — that
is exactly what we have done. This is precisely what you were so
afraid the French would do, and now we have done it.
I will proceed to some individual questions.
DEAN ACHESON's ATTITUDE
You caught my interest in the end. You talked about the telegram.
You said, "The telegram had, however, spoken sharply against the
danger of Ho Chi Minh's 'direct Communist connection.' "
Was that telegram sent by Dean Acheson ?
Mr. Moffat. Well, Dean Acheson was Acting Secretary; his name
is on every telegram. I don't know whether he saw it or not.
The Chairman. It is one that has been referred to in the Pentagon
Papers, I believe, and it came out in the report of the subcommittee
as illustrating his attitude. This rather dramatic change between the
attitude of the Administrations of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Tru-
man, is it not fair to say that this represented the influence of Secre-
tary Acheson ? Your explanation of the relative influence of the Bu-
reaus of European Affairs and Southeast Asian Affairs fits into that
very clearly, I think. Secretary Acheson had been oriented, I guess,
all his life very largely to the European theater and had been very
close in many respects to negotiations with the British during the war.
BRITISH GOVERNMENT'S SUPPORT OF U.S. VIETNAM POLICY
Another thought occurred to me — this persistence of the British
government's support for our policy in Vietnam is rather understand-
able when we see the very great responsibility they have for it, because
that was a major influence, if I understand you correctly, during this
period prohibiting or interfering with our following the policy that
your agency, your division, recommended, was it not?
Mr. Moffat. Well, they kept doing everything they could to put
the French back into Indochina and they supported them whole-
heartedlv.
The Chairman. I didn't realize it when I heard Prime Minister
Wilson make such a glowing eulogv of President Johnson's policy
down at the White House one night; I didn't realize there was a
background of guilt which he must have felt for having gotten us
involved in this affair, so they still persist in it.
it5 &v
181
Mr. Moffat. They didn't get us involved.
The Chairman. They were a good obstacle to our following what
you recommended, were they not ?
Mr. Moffat. I think, in part, but I think the opposition of the
European Office was just what I said, that they believed that our
primary interest was to help build the French back and they con-
sidered that the colony was relatively unimportant and not really
any of our business and the real interest from the American viewpoint
was to strengthen the French.
The Chairman. They were against the liquidation of their own
colonial empire or anyone else's because they thought theirs was going
to be influenced by it ; is that a fair statement ?
Mr. Moffat. The British were, exactly.
The Chairman. So whatever influence they had, which was pretty
great at that time, with the prestige of Churchill, was against the
policy that you have announced President Roosevelt wished to follow
with regard to Indochina ?
Mr. Moffat. That is right.
The Chairman. Is that not correct ?
Mr. Moffat. That is true.
ALLIES INFLUENCED U.S. JUDGMENT
The Chairman. So we have been had, as the slang goes, by our allies
influencing our judgment. I can understand how that could happen.
They were all experienced communities; we were relatively new in
this' area and it isn't just to blame people; it is to try to understand
and at least to develop sufficient maturity on our own part that at
the present time at least we ought to be able to profit by these mistakes
and to follow our own policy; and I am frank to snv I can't under-
stand why we cannot.
This, taken together with Mr. "White's very moving statement about
Ho Chi Minh as an individual, and his attitude toward us and the
world, really, it is just incredible that a great nation could be so mis-
guided. And I must say, I still find it almost impossible to understand
how we got ourselves off into this misguided venture, tragic venture,
which is costing us so much.
FRENCH LEFr INDOCHINA TO U.S.
The French, of course, they finally, in their wisdom, were more
realistic and they left Indochina and they left it to us. We stepped
into their shoes, did we not ?
Mr. Moffat. Well, there was an interval there — I started in my
first draft— to use that expression, but technically I believe there
was— what was it, about 3 years after Dienbienphu, before we really
moved in.
The Chairman. You mean physically?
Mr. Moffat. Yes.
The Chairman. But philosophically and diplomatically we moved
almost immediately after the conference in Geneva to create SEATO,
with the obvious purpose, as it has turned out to be, to prevent the
implementation of Geneva ; is that correct ?
182
Mr. Moffat. I don't feel I know enough about that period ; I really
don't.
I know I just didn't like SEATO.
The Chairman. That has been its effect, has it not ?
I have seen mention of the British attitude but this almost con-
tinuous obsequiousness to American policy in Vietnam, I think, is
explained pretty well by what you said here. Their Foreign Office
having taken that view, I can feel they just have not quite been
immune from that feeling of complicity in our policy there. Even with
this latest escalation, and I have not read all the papers exhaustively,
but I believe they are the only significant country that has approved
the statement of 3 days ago. I don't believe any other European
country of any consequence has approved it. Have you seen any
notification of it?
Mr. Moffat. I have not seen it.
The Chairman-. It is the only one, and I must say I don't think it
is to their credit in view of their interest, their influence, in getting
us involved.
CLASSIFICATION OF WITNESS' REPORTS
I would be very interested if the committee could have these reports,
simply to complete the record of the committee on this earlier state
while it is on our minds. I will initiate and really try to get your
reports, if possible. I don't know why they should remain classified,
do you, Mr. White, after all these years?
Mr. White. No, I don't, sir.
The Chairman. There is no reason. It would seem to me they
would be important historical documents.
Mr. White. Incidentally, I would like to add
The Chairman. What?
NO RESPONSE TO REPORTS
Mr. White. Perhaps it is relevant to add that those of us who were
filing reports from the field, as we were always referred to, it was
like dropping stones down a bottomless well. My files or my dispatches
from Hanoi at the time were quite voluminous and. I felt, quite com-
plete insofar as what I was doing, what I could see, what I could
report, what I could analyze, what I could assess, what I could evalu-
uate, and I never, other than to receive some instructions about logis-
tics and food and travel and so on, I never really got any response
to the substance of these reports at all, no reaction from higher head-
quarters, to report that the dispatches had reached the Department
or if so what departments and, you know, it was really — we were
way out at the end of the line.
Mr. Moffat. May I say that is an experience a great many of us
have had. We had the same thing when we sent memoranda to the
president. I never knew until I read Mr. Hull's statement in his
memoirs, that he had over seen the memorandum which I wrote on
colonies and the desirability of trying to get specific commitments.
The Chairman. There was very little intercommunication. You
would file them and that was that. You never knew whether they
came to their attention.
183
Mr. White. In our case, OSS case, as intelligence officers, we learned
to live with the central fact of intelligence life and that is that you
specifically know as little about what anybody else was doing as your
function will permit. So I didn't expect to get, you know, lavish inflow.
But, for example, I was never told exactly why the OSS mission in
Hanoi that I replaced had been withdrawn except T was advised that
they had "exceeded authority."
WITHDRAWAL OF COLONEL GALLAGHER AND PATTI MISSION FROM HANOI
The Chairman. Was there a Colonel Gallagher in the mission that
you replaced?
Mr. White. Colonel Gallagher was active in the area but he was
never there at the time I was there.
The Chairman. But was he there at the time preceding you?
Mr. White. Yes, he had been there briefly and he had come back.
He had been there with the mission that I replaced, which was called
the Patti mission because it was headed by a Major Patti.
The Chairman. How large was the mission ?
Mr. White. I really can't be very sure. They were — in fact, they left
on the very aircraft that brought me in, my group, and it seemed to
me as we passed each other there were 8 or 9 of them.
The Chairman. Eight or nine of them ?
Mr. White. I could be wrong about that.
The Chairman. Is Colonel Gallagher still aroimd ? Do you know ?
Mr. White. I can't tell you, sir.
The Chairman. Do you know ?
How many were in your mission with 3011 ?
Mr. White. At the time in Hanoi ?
The Chairman. Yes, while you were in Hanoi ?
Mr. White. Just three of us.
The Chairman. Three of you ?
Mr. White. Myself, a young cryptographer, and a radio operator.
Th? Chairman. I have run across something about references to
the very cordial relations between Gallagher and Ho Chi Minh; is
that not true?
Mr. White. Yes, that is true. It is in
The Chairman. Is that what exceeded his authority — being friendly
with Ho Chi Minh?
Mr. White. That could possibly be. As I say, it was not explained
to me precisely why they were withdrawn.
The Chairman. You don't know ?
Mr. White. But I do know the British and the French very ser-
iously resented OSS activity insofar as they related to
The Chairman. For the same reasons Mr. Moffat referred to : they
just didn't want the Americans meddling, they were afraid we would
be interested in the independence of Vietnam — is that your view ?
Mr. White. That's right.
ASSASSINATION OF COLONEL DEWEY
The Chairman. You intimated — you did not state it, properly so ;
you could not prove it, that the assassination of Col. Dewey was left
184
up in the air as if it wasn't unreasonable to believe it might have been
inspired by the French ?
Mr. White. That is a conclusion that has been drawn.
The Chairman. That is a conclusion ?
Mr. White. But without any basis, any foundation, in evidence so
far as I know.
Mr. Chairman. Explain a little more in detail, who was Mr.
Dewey ?
Mr. White. Colonel Dewey was a young — not so young — he was
an OSS officer who took the original detachment of which I was part
into Saigon.
The Chairman. Yes ?
Mr. White. What precisely his authorization and instructions
were from our higher headquarters vis-a-vis native, nationalist
groups, I don't know. But he did see the prominent leaders of many
groups, some clandestinely and some otherwise, in Saigon during
that period.
The Chairman. Would you say he was identified with the national-
ist elements among the Vietnamese?
Mr. White. Well, certainly I can say this because it is a matter of
record and it is a matter of my personal experience, that Colonel
Dewey came from a terribly well-connected family in Illinois at the
time.
The Chairman. Was lie a relative to Congressman Dewey ?
Mi-. White. Yes.
Senator Percy. Congressman Dewey — a son.
The Chairman. A son ?
Mr. White. Son ; that's right.
The Chairman. Charles Dewey ?
Mr. White. Yes.
The Chairman. I knew him. I didn't know there was a connection.
Mr. White. His name was Peter Dewey but in my capacity as a
liaison officer, General Gracey and General LeClerc very often told me
how much they resented Dewey's activity in seeing nationalist leaders.
The Chairman. They didn't think much better of yourself either,
did they ?
Mr. White. They didn't like any of us.
QUESTION OF COLONIAL POWER AGAINST ITS COLONY
The Chairman. This is a very sad, but I think a very significant
thing, because of the emphasis that you and Mr. Moffat both put
upon the nationalist character of the movement, as opposed to the
alleged Communism. It is clear from both of you and was so clear to
you and others that it is incredible that it did not impress our people
more in view of our own history.
If we had been a great colonial power, I can see how we could be
sympathetic with the British point of view ; but this whole thing is one
of the most mysterious aberrations that this country has ever engaged
in. It is the only case I know of — maybe, Mr. Moffat, you, being a pro-
fessional, know of any other cases in which this country has taken the
185
position of the colonial power against its colony. Do you know of any
other example in our whole history ?
Mr. Moffat. I can't think of any right off the bat.
The Chairman. I can't think of any either. I don't know of any. All
during this period, we did proceed later to encourage the Dutch to
get out of Indonesia, did we not ?
Mr. Moffat. Yes.
The Chairman. We certainly were accused of it. The Dutch resented
it very much and the same in India and I think in Egypt and all
around. Very often it is nothing but sympathy, by that I mean in many
cases there is no tangible action, but our sympathies and our encour-
agements have always been in that connection.
There were one or two things
WHETHER BANGLADESH WAS COLONY OF WEST PAKISTAN
Senator Percy. Mr. Chairman, if you wouldn't mind an interrup-
tion, I wonder how you would look upon our relationship with Pakistan
and Bangladesh as to whether Bangladesh was really a colony and
treated as a colon}' of West Pakistan? We certainly backed up and
supported West Pakistan.
The Chairman. I don't consider, due to the very short life of this
creation, creation as a result of war, that it was a colonial relationship.
It certainly is not comparable to the British and French where one
alien people have gone in by force and dominated another. It is my
understanding that nation was created upon religious grounds; the
division was an effor to divide the Moslems from the Hindus. Until
yesterday, I never heard anyone suggest that it was a colonial relation-
ship, but in that case we didn't do anything other than tilt the con-
versation. I don't think that is — at least in my view — it is not an exam-
ple of an exemption to that rule, because I would not consider that a
colonial relationship.
PRESIDENT ROOSEVELTS MEMORANDUM ON INDOCHINA
Would you explain, just explore, expand just a bit on President
Roosevelt's memorandum. It says simply and succinctly, "No French
help in Indochina — country on trusteeship." That is a very cryptic
message. Could you expand that a bit, would you?
Mr. Moffat. There was "FDR" at the end o'f it.
The Chairman. What? Explain it.
Mr. Moffat. That is the extent of his message. He had apparently
told the Secretary of State a good many times about his position on
wanting trusteeship and when this paper came to him indicating that
the Department would like to help the French get back, he just said
"No French help in Indochina." It was endorsed in the upper lefthand
corner of the document.
The Chairman. He thought that was the disposition of it — no help
to the French ?
Mr. Moffat. And then the Department sent a letter to the military,
because this related to the military, you see, and just informed them
186
of what the President said, adding that there was nothing to be done
about implementing the trusteeship purpose at this time.
CHANGE IN" FDR'S POLICY BY TRUMAN ADMINISTRATION
The Chairman. One last question, at least before I yield to the Sena-
tor from Illinois.
What has been the very crux of the matter to me was this rather
dramatic change between FDR's policy and that of the Truman Ad-
ministration. Usually we think of a continuity in the bureaucracy, that
the change of a President does not usually change the bureaucracy.
We have a very remarkable continuation in policy between Johnson
and Nixon, in my opinion, the way they view the world and the things
they continue to aspire to, and I am not sure that it is very different
from Kennedy. I think I could say that there was a greater similarity
in many respects to the attitude of these three Administrations, and
I assume the bureaucracy has much to do with it, but there seemed to
be a very marked and sharp demarcation — and almost immediately —
between the death of FDR and the accession to power of Truman. One
of the most significant things is this: The Truman Doctrine was an-
nounced, I believe, about a year later than the period you mentioned
here, was it not, in 1947 ?
Mr. Moffat. March 1947, 1 think.
The Chairman. March 1947 ?
Mr. Moffat. That is 2 years later.
The Chairman. Two years later ?
Mr. Moffat. From the President's death.
The Chairman. Could you elaborate a bit on what you think hap-
pened there ?
Mr. Moffat. Well, sir, I don't think there was a change in the bu-
reaucracy. I think the policy was there all along. We had been feeling
this; there was the split inside the Department between those of us
who were following Far Eastern Affairs and those who were on the
European Affairs. Every so often, I think, efforts were made, while
Mr. Roosevelt was in office to get him to approach more closely their
point of view about the French and Indochina. These were rebuffed,
as on this occasion, with this "No French help.''
What happened was, on Roosevelt's death, the military were want-
ing certain decisions made apropos of the theaters. There had been
certain arrangements made, as you know, between Chiang Kai-chek
and Mountbatten, and although Indochina, was theoretically in the
China Theater and under American strategic responsibility, either side
could go in and fight and they would then divide up the theater later
on. Our military wanted some decisions made in connection with that.
I don't know whether that had actually started before the President's
death or not, but anyway, the proposal to get a policy statement ema-
nated from that and the European Division then said, "Well, all right,
let's see if we can get the same policy," that I think they wanted all
the time
The Chairman. Yes.
Mr. Moffat (continuing). And they had been pushing it.
The thing that upset me so very seriously about this was their memo-
randum, which is in the Pentagon Papers. It didn't give Mr. Truman
187
any background information as to what Roosevelt's policies had been,
or why they were changing it, and I always thought that was what
really aggrieved me so that I went to town on this one very strongly
to get the background to the President.
The Chairman. They censored his information ?
Mr. Moffat. Well, you are supposed to send short memoranda, sir.
[Laughter.]
The Chairman. Then, if I can summarize, the European Division
of the State Department had all along believed in this and your di-
vision and Roosevelt had been in opposition ?
Upon his death the bureaucracy did assert itself and convinced Mr.
Truman of it, is that a fair summary ?
Mr. Moffat. I think it is a fair summary, sir.
We never sent a memo to the President; no memorandum went to
the President ; there was no policy paper.
The Chairman. To Truman ?
Mr. Moffat. Yes, sir.
The Chairman. I see.
Mr. Moffat. So it continued to "drift" until such time as the French
were in there and then there was nothing for us to do.
The Chairman. The Senator from Illinois?
RUSSIAN STATEMENT IN RESPONSE TO PRESIDENT'S ACTIONS
Senator Percy. I am sorry I did not hear Mr. White's testimony.
I flew in from Chicago this morning, but I have had a chance to scan
through Mr. Moffat's. I am going to resist the temptation to ask you
for your reaction, for a while anyway, on the Russian statement that
has been released in response to the Presidents actions, but — if you
have not seen that statement — I can give you the summation of it
very quickly, and I would very much appreciate your reaction to it.
OFFICIAL REACTION TO HO's STATEMENT OF FRIENDSHIP FOR U.S.
But so that we may continue our historical inquiry, I would very
much appreciate, Mr. Moffat, your reactions to and knowledge as to
what might have been the response, the official response, of the United
States Government when we did receive and learn of statements made
by Ho as to his professed friendship for the United States — was
there an official reaction ever?
Mr. Moffat. The position, and we were very sympathetic with Ho
Chi Minh who was, in our opinion, perfectly clear — a letter addressed
to the President of the United States cannot be answered without, in
effect, I mean, other than from the head of another state, without
actually involving recognition. We talked with him, we had all com-
munications with him. but there was no answer ever sent to a formal
inquiry addressed to the President of the United States, and I think
if we had, that would have been token by the French in that case as a
really serious affront and possibly a breach of international etiquette.
Senator Percy. Were his statements acknowledged to the extent that
we possibly could, under international protocol, or were they also
ignored simply because he was a Communist ?
Mr. Moffat. It had nothing to do with his being a Communist. I
wrote one of those memos saying we shouldn't answer this.
83-605 0—73 13
188
Senator Percy. Our lack of official responses was well understood by
him, simply because of his understanding of international protocol ?
Mr. Moffat. I don't know what his reaction would be, but I assume
that he would have understood that.
Senator Percy. Mr. White
Mr. Moffat. May I just on this point, which was made yesterday
by Mr. Chomsky or somebody, that this was because he was a Commu-
nist— that wave of worrying about communism didn't take effect,
didn't begin to become important, in the Department until the end of
1946, and all these communications had come in long before that.
OFFICIAL VIEW OF HO CHI MINH
Senator Percy. Now, Mr. White, was there any official view taken
by the OSS or any other governmental agency that you know of, of
Ho Chi Minh?
Mr. White. No, I don't believe we had an official view in that sense ;
our mission was to try to advise the departments, our headquarters,
who was on first base in this particular part of the world, and what he
was up to ; and in that context it was clear that the party and the par-
ticular leader who was on first was certainly Ho Chi Minh. My instruc-
tions, for example, when I reached Hanoi were to seek out and report
on the principal people. There was not any specific reference to Ho
Chi Minh as such, but it is clear that the principal person, at least on
that side of the fence, was Ho.
Senator Percy. You heard Mr. Moffat's statement as to how he
looked on Ho. Was he looked on as a Communist of any particular
sort ? Was he looked upon strictly as a Communist within the nation-
alists' particular framework or was he looked upon by the OSS as an
agent of Moscow ?
Mr. White. Certainly not by those of us who were there, Mr. Percy.
We looked at him as a leader of a party, the principal party and the
principal leader. I had occasion to recount some conversations I had
with him, and he never made any secret or attempted to downplay
the fact that he was a Communist and had been a Communist, that he
had been to Eussia, that he had been interested in working for the
Communist cause in many parts of the world and so forth, but when
I talked to him he was taking a really quite matter-of-fact who is
going to help me get this place running — you know.
DID HO CHI MINH PROVIDE SERVICES FOR U.S. ?
Senator Percy. Did he perform any services that you know of for
the United States Government ? Was he of any assistance, for instance,
in connection with the rescuing of clowned American fliers ?
Mr. White. Yes, he was. I asked him particularly about this because
one of the functions we had in OSS was to attempt to locate people
who had been particularly heroic in defense of American interests and
people in that area during the Japanese occupation.
We had heard that Ho had indeed helped two American fliers,
Navy pilots, reach safety in China, and according to the report we
had at the time, which we had not had any way, really, to confirm,
but it was that he had walked personally all the way from his moun-
189
tainous retreat, hideaway, in northern Tonkin to Kunming, to the
outskirts of Kunming, and delivered those two pilots over in effect to
American authorities in Kunming ; and he allowed that that was true,
but before I could ask him for any details and get Mm to explain
the length of the trip and so forth, he rather uncomfortably shifted
the subject to something he was more particularly anxious to talk
about, which was where could he get —
Senator Percy. Could you give us the benefit of any conversation
you might have had with OSS officers who had worked with the Viet
Minh before you arrived, as to what Ho was really doing?
Was he fighting the Japanese or was he operating in just harassing
operations and stockpiling resources to fight his own battles later;
that is, for the postwar use?
Mr. White. Yes, if I understand your question, I didn't have any
debriefing from the operation I succeeded. The very limited conver-
sations I had with the departing group was that Ho had in fact
been very useful in, and very resistant to the Japanese — harassment
was about the limit, harassment and provision of intelligence, was
about the limit of his contribution. But there had been no lack of co-
operation, or enthusiasm, on his part. The answer to your part whether
he was laying some kind of infrastructure, laying some plans for later,
I did not get that impression. I didn't get the impression that he
was using resistance to the Japanese, as a ploy for bringing in power
his own group. But I can't — I am not a terribly reliable witness on
that point.
HO CHI MINH'S OUTLOOK ON CHINESE- VIETNAMESE RELATIONSHIPS
Senator Percy. Did he ever comment to you on the long history of
China's attempt to dominate Indochina ?
Mr. White. Yes, sir. You will find in this dispatch that that was
very much on his mind when he discussed this with me. He gave me,
in fact, a primer on Indochinese history or the history of the people,
which is mainly one of resistance to the Chinese over a course of 800
years, and he gave that to me in great detail.
Senator Percy. Did he comment to you or describe what his out-
look would be on Chinese- Vietnamese relationships ?
Mr. White. In the sense, by inference certainly, he would resist all
forms of Chinese domination of an independent Vietnam; that was
their historical position and it was a very practical feeling he had this
day which was exacerbated, as I said a little bit earlier, by the fact
that his part of the world, the province of Tonkin and the northern
part of Annam, that part north of the 16th parallel, were under
Chinese occupation and the Chinese were looting the country very
diligently. Here again it is the Chinese problem that was uppermost
in his mind.
Mr. Moffat. Senator, could I say something about that?
Senator Percy. Yes, Mr. Moffat.
Mr. Moffat. I think one of the problems we have in discussing the
problems of this period is that China was nationalist at this time and
the Communists did not come into China for another 3 years, but
what a great many of us felt, and I have always felt, that the innate
feeling and concern about China would have prevented domination
190
by a Communist China of a Communist Vietnam just as the latter
would oppose a Nationalist China.
Senator Percy. Was there a feeling on your part that he was person-
ally prejudiced against the Chinese, and what was the depth of his
feeling about them ? How did he describe them and what might have
been imbued in the existing leadership as a result of that indoctrina-
tion?
Mr. White. In his discussions with me he would refer to the Chinese
as "our traditional enemy." But he referred in a rather academic
sense rather than in an emotional or an immediate sense. He sort of —
"as you know, we have been resisting Chinese domination for 800
years" and then go on to tell me about some early Chinese emperor
who had done something particularly offensive to the Indochinese
pride.
Senator Percy. Could you comment, on the much discussed theory
that if it is our objective to resist Chinese aggression in that area,
that possibly one of the best ways to do it might have been to have a
strong, unified Vietnam under some strong, powerful leader like Ho
who was not a puppet of Peking? Ho looked upon China as a tradi-
tional enemy and Ho would resist with everything he could any in-
vasion of that area or undue influence in that area by the Chinese.
Mr. White. Yes, I agree with that, but I would like to put it the
other way around, if you don't mind.
Senator Percy. Rephrase it yourself.
Mr. White. It is my opinion that if we had proceeded the other way
in this tragic story and that there had been an independent but indeed
Communist or Communist sympathizing Indochina, that it would not
now be dominated or in any way influenced by Peking. The back-
ground of the relationships between the two countries would have
seen to that, as well as Ho and the innate nationalism of the entire
people.
WITNESS' ASSESSMENT OF DECEMBER 194 6 MEETING WITH HO
Senator Percy. Mr. Moffat, when you returned to the Department of
State after your December 1946 meeting with Ho, what did you report
and how was your assessment received ?
Mr. Moffat. Well, it was quite an interval. I didn't get back until
the middle of February. I continued to send back diary letters which
don't appear in the Committee study and in some of these I let myself
go to members of my division in comments on Indochina, as the De-
partment seemed to be getting much too much concerned on the Com-
munist business and that it didn't— it was not justified in that part of
the world. I did somehow— I read the telegrams and I still don't know
how I managed to get that one of May 13 through the Department,
but that was the last effort we were able to make.
FRENCH METHODS OF REACTIVATING CONTROL IN INDOCHINA
Senator Percy. How would you characterize the French methods
of reactivating their control in that part of the world, postwar? What
methods, what techniques did they use ?
Mr. White. Which one of us, sir ?
Senator Percy. Well, Mr. Moffat first ?
191
Mr. Moffat. I was trying to-
Senator Percy. I would like both of you to answer.
Mr. Moffat. I think Mr. White could give you really more on the
ground operations.
The basic problem was that they did not want to stick by their March
6 agreement. As you know, the Chinese wouldn't pull out north when
they were supposed to. There was a long delay, but then Ho CM Minh
did make the agreement that he would let the French send in forces
peacefully, and the French made the agreement that Vietnam was to
be recognized as a free state inside the French Union. I think people
misunderstood, again talking international law, and think we could
have recognized Vietnam at that time, but there was no question of
foreign relations in the March 6 agreement; the Vietnamese were not
given that power. That was to be subject to discussion. We couldn't
have turned around and recognized "the free state" inside the Union
at that stage under international law.
But the French were just encroaching and pulling back on each
commitment they made. The Vietnamese were doing exactly the same
thing. They were making attacks here and there. They were both
breaching agreements.
The French were more successful, however, in making further and
stronger moves and I would have said there was a piecemeal break-
down of what they had first agreed to as they got stronger militarily.
Now, I think Frank White can say more about the actual operations
in the field.
Senator Percy. Mr. White ?
Mr. White. Yes, sir, I can report how it was on the ground at the
time.
I remember shortly after we arrived, General LeClerc arrived on
the ship Pasteur in Saigon, I guess it was at the end of September,
1945 — and he had a regiment of French troops but, of course, they were
French Legionnaires and I doubt if there were half a dozen French-
men in the entire group. They were mainly Germans from POW
camps. But, anyhow, General LeClerc made it very clear early on as
he paraphrased the famous phrase of Winston Churchill, said: "I
didn't come back to Indochina to give Indochina back to the Indo-
chinese." His forces wherever they could reassert the French presence,
did so and if it would require doing it in an aggressive, ruthless way,
they did it.
On the other hand, I would leave the record incomplete and unclear
if it weren't also stated that Viet Minh nationalists, later to become,
you know, to be the precursors of the Viet Cong, committed excesses
of their own. French civilians were brutalized on occasions, and this
combination of excesses on both sides finally erupted into the war that
was to come later. But it started — it followed the flag, as it were.
Everyplace it went the excesses began and so forth however, the French
did in the south manage to obtain and enforce a certain degree of con-
trol by the end of 1946.
COMPARISON" OF VIET MINH AND FRENCH ADMINISTRATION
Senator Percy. Specifically, could both of you compare the nature
of the Viet Minh administration in the north of Indochina and that
of the French in those areas they were bringing under their control ?
192
What different techniques, approaches, procedures, methods did each
of them use ?
Mr. Moffat. I don't know that I could answer that question. I don't
feel I am personally familiar.
Senator Percy. Mr. White ?
Mr. White. Well, I can go this far and say when in areas the French
assumed control they resorted to the familiar people and practices of
the prewar regime. Many of the people, many of the bureaucracy, both
native and French, were restored to the same kind of positions they
had before. Now, in the areas that the Viet Minh controlled, we were
not there to be able to observe any more than we were able to observe
it in the Vietnamization program now.
SOVIET REPLY TO PRESIDENT NIXON's SPEECH
Senator Percy. Those are all the historical questions I have. Per-
haps then I will turn to the Soviet reply today to President Nixon's
speech.
You know how I feel about this war. I would say that this first reac-
tion of the Soviet Government to the mining of North Vietnamese
harbors gives some hope that a confrontation can be avoided, and that
the summit conference will not be cancelled. The summit wasn't even
mentioned in their reaction, and if this is true, then I would hope we
could continue efforts to develop constructive relations with the Soviet
Union, China and other world powers.
I think your own reaction would be most interesting and helpful
to us. The Soviet statement reads as follows :
The Soviet Government resolutely insists that the United States' steps to block
the coast and disrupt ground communications of the Democratic Republic of
Vietnam be canceled without delay.
The Government of the United States announced a new escalation of its ag-
gressive actions in Vietnam, the actions that complicate further the situation in
Southeast Asia and are fraught with serious consequences for international peace
and security.
The statement said that Nixon gave an order for "mining the entries
into the North Vietnamese ports so as to prevent ships from reaching
the ports, for intensification of bombing of the DRV territory and,
specifically, for hitting from the air railroads and other communica-
tions."
And I quote further from their statement :
In this way, the United States tries to break the economic, trade and other
relations that the DRV has developed with other states, to deprive the Demo-
cratic Republic of Vietnam of the opportunity to receive aid for its people to
rebuff the U.S. aggression and also to receive foodstuffs and other supplies from
(as received) the peaceful population.
The statement demanded that acts of U.S. aggression against the
DRV be ended, that the right to freedom of international navigation
and trade be respected. The Soviet Government expresses hope that
this point of view is shared by the government and people of all peace-
loving states.
The Russians said :
No matter what false pretexts are used to cover up the adventurist actions of
the United States armed forces in Vietnam, the real purpose of these actions is
193
obvious : It is not to save the United States from humiliation but to save the
notorious "Vietnamization" policy which suffers an obvious failure.
The Kremlin said :
Intensification of the bombings of the DRV territory and Washington's at-
tempts to establish singlehandedly its own rules of international navigation
cannot but cause indignation and strong censure. These actions show again for
the whole world the piratic nature of the war which the United States has un-
leased and continues against the Vietnamese people for many years.
The Soviets said the U.S. has signed the Geneva Convention and :
The Soviet Union considers as inadmissible the U.S. actions which jeopardize
the freedom of navigation and security of Soviet and other ships.
The Soviet Union will draw from this appropriate conclusions that the Gov-
ernment of the United States will bear the entire responsibility for the possible
consequences of its illegal actions.
The Kussians warned the United States it is following "a dangerous
and slippery road" and said that it can lead only to a new complica-
tion of the international situation.
REACTIONS TO SOVIET STATEMENT
Now, from your long experience with communications from the
Soviet Union, and considering the situation that we face today, the re-
action of each of you to that statement would be very much appreci-
ated.
Mr. Moffat. Well, I read one other paragraph which bothers me
even more and that is the next to the last paragraph which says — you
have had the word "inadmissible" which I believe in the Diplomatic
Corps is a strong word. Then it says, "The Soviet Government reso-
lutely insists that the U.S. steps to block the coast be cancelled without
delay." And that is awfully strong language in an international state-
ment. I think they have left some things out but I think there is going
to have to be some face-saving all around or else we may very easily
get into a very serious confrontation.
Senator Percy. Mr. White ?
Mr. White. Yes, my offhand reaction to — I mean, not offhand but
my instant reaction is that I am surprised that the Soviets did not take
a more hostile sounding response than this one because I feel that the
administration in each one of its major moves particularly in the
last 10 days, but over the period of its concern in this affair has at
each possible occasion taken another turn of the screw and at some
juncture, I do think it is going to result in a rupturing relationship
between ourselves and the Soviet Union and cause them to suffer seri-
ously. I would not have been surprised if the summit had been called
off. "
Senator Percy. I would have agreed with much of what you said.
Mr. White. It still may be.
Senator Percy. Mr. Chairman, those are all the questions I have.
The Chairman. Thank you.
I have just seen this message and my first reaction is like yours. 1
think it is a very restrained statement under the circumstances and I
hope it will continue to be restrained. That is going to be a very difficult
subject for this morning. There are a few odds and ends I would like
to explore before we adjourn.
194
FRENCH COLLABORATION WITH JAPANESE
Mr. Moffat, I think you said in your statement that the French
collaborated with the Japanese which was news to me. Could you
explain that a little further ?
Mr. Moffat. They acted as hosts to the Japanese ; they kept the ad-
ministration in operation, officially French, but the Japanese ran the
country and they just went along with it. There was nothing they could
do but they went along in order to stay in power, I think, largely.
The Chairman. You mean while the Japanese
Mr. Moffat. During the period of the Japanese, from the time the
Japanese moved in until the
The Chairman. What was that period, just for the record? I would
like it.
Mr. Moffat. That would have been in 1941, December 1941.
The Chairman. Until when ?
Mr. Moffat. Until March 1945.
The Chairman. Were the French nominally administering the
country?
Mr. Moffat. Yes, sir.
Mr. Chairman. But under the direction of the Japanese ; is that the
way it was ?
Mr. Moffat. Yes, sir. Under the Decoux administration.
The Chairman. But the regular provincial administration was still
French ?
Mr. Moffat. Yes, sir.
The Chairman. Although they were, of course, taking their orders
from the Japanese?
Mr. Moffat. Yes, sir.
RECOGNITION OF TWO VIETNAMS
The Chairman. Tell me, Mr. Moffat, during your experience was
there any recognition by the government there were two Vietnams ?
Mr. Moffat. We always treated it as one.
The Chairman. Did anybody treat it as two, to your knowledge ?
Mr. Moffat. Well, in Cochin China the southern province, there
were a whole series of nationalist factions there, and the Viet Minh
or the Vietnam Government did not have the same control and they
didn't have a chance to develop it before they were pushed out because
that was in the area controlled by the British.
The Chairman. But prior to the intervention of foreigners, the
French always considered it one country, did they not?
Mr. Moffat. No, Cochin China was set up as a colony, but Tonkin
and Annam were protectorates which did not include sovereignty.
The Chairman. What was the distinction of that ?
Mr. Moffat. We recognized the emperor, I mean the French rec-
ognized the emperor and protectorate and the French had a protec-
torate of those two states agreeing to take care of them and to prevent
aggression against them, and that is why I said earlier they had not
honored their own responsibilities.
195
ROLE OF BAO DAI
The Chairman. You mentioned Bao Dai; just what was his role
during
Mr. Moffat. Well, he had a series of roles.
The Chairman. What was he prior to the war ?
Mr. Moffat. He was emperor in Annam at Hue, and then when
Ho Chi Minh set up and established a Vietnam Provisional Govern-
ment, they persuaded Bao Dai that he had better back them so he
threw his support behind them, otherwise he would have been thrown
out; I guess he was actually eliminated for a time; and then later
the French decided, with our encouragement, to select Bao Dai to
head a puppet govermnent, as the one person they could think of
who could rally the non-Communist elements in Vietnam around him.
So he came back as the ruler but he didn't last very long before he
went back to the Riviera.
The Chairman. I am afraid I am not making it very clear.
Was Bao Dai just the emperor of just Annam, not Tonkin and
Cochin China ?
Mr. Moffat. Not Cochin China. Was Tonkin part of it? No, just
Annam.
Mr. White. Just Annam.
The Chairman. The capital of Annam is Hue ?
Mr. White. Hue.
The Chairman. What was in Tonkin at that time ?
Mr. White. Tonkin was an independent, was a protectorate as Mr.
Moffat says.
The Chairman. Directly under a French government?
Mr. White. That's right.
The Chairman. This palace you met at, you met with Ho, was
old
Mr. White. That was the French residence or palace.
The Chairman. The French residence for the French representa-
tive.
VIETNAM REGARDED AS SINGLE POLITICAL ENTITY
Often we have talked about the section in the Geneva Accords which
says the 17th parallel is not to be recognized as a political division or
for any purpose other than for this regrouping.
Are you familiar with that ?
Mr. White. That is my recollection.
The Chairman. Which leaves the impression that they regard it,
all of Vietnam, as a single political entity. Is that correct, Mr. Moffat?
Mr. Moffat. Well, except there was to be a plebiscite both in the
north and in the south ; and the original problem that Ho Chi Minh
had, everybody recognized his complete control of the north, but the
various factions and the French efforts to break the south away from
them, they said we will have a plebiscite and this was one of the agree-
ments which was not carried out. By that time, nobody trusted any
vote anyway; it depended on who was controlling the election.
196
USE OF ELECTIONS
The Chairman. Had elections been used as a method of determin-
ing leadership other than at the village level ?
Mr. Moffat. I don't think so.
The Chairman. They elected village chiefs just by the way one
does in a New England town meeting, I suppose. Is that right? Is
that your impression ?
Mr. White. That is my impression, yes. I could be wrong on this,
but I am virtually certain that, for example, when he described him-
self to me as the Provisional President or the President of the Pro-
visional Government of Tonkin, Ho had never stood for any election.
He may have been elected by his own party members but there had
been no plebiscite or any general election of any kind that established
him as the president.
FRENCH BOMBARDMENT OF HAIPHONG
The Chairman. Mr. White, were you in Haiphong when the French
bombarded Haiphong at sort of the beginning of the war?
Mr. White. Yes, I was.
The Chairman. And killed, it is alleged, 6,000 Vietnamese ? I have
seen accounts that they killed 6,000.
Mr. White. I believe that to be exaggerated. When I came in I was
at a waterfront bistro at a time, as I recall
The Chairman. At what ?
Mr. White. A waterfront cafe, bistro, sitting out there.
The Chairman. What is the date ?
Mr. White. It was in November of 1945.
Mr. Moffat. No.
Mr. White. No, the French returned.
Mr. Moffat. That is why I think we were getting confused here.
There were two of those episodes that I remember.
The Chairman. Two episodes ?
Mr. Moffat. November 1946, was when Colonel Debes bombarded.
Mr. White. That's right.
Mr. Moffat. That is a later one.
Mr. White. I am referring when he first came back and brought
this flotilla, and the battle cruiser Richelieu. They came in and they
fired off a lively cannonade of big guns but whether the big guns actu-
ally— they didn't hit any part where I was near nor did I see any
evidence of damage. I think it was a 14th of July salute.
The Chairman. It was largely a warning, I suppose ?
Mr. White. That's right.
The Chairman. Rather than the real bombardment. As long as we
are on that subject, you were not there later when they really did kill
a lot of people, is that right ?
Mr. Moffat. Yes, I was there shortly after that.
The Chairman. Describe that. What happened?
Mr. Moffat. I am trying to go back now because this is after all, 25
years now, to get the details. The French brought up a fleet of boats
and gave an ultimatum of 3 hours. I think the Vietnamese must
agree to turn over the customs which were supposed to be Vietnamese
197
or jointly administered to the French and set up a zone that the Viet-
namese might not go into, part
The Chairman. What is that day ? I want to get it clear. When did
this happen ?
Mr. Moffat. In November 1946, sir.
The Chairman. 1946 ?
Mr. Moffat. I have always thought that this particular episode was
what precipitated the decision of the Vietnamese to fight. There was
no time? physically, to get an answer- — I mean, to get the message of
this ultimatum up to Hanoi and get a reply, and they asked for an
extension and they promised to get off the message and get a decision
from the government.
Instead, the bombardment took place as promised at the end of 3
hours, with the shells very carefully avoiding the Chinese sector but
going into the Vietnamese section of town, and I was staying shortly
after this with the American Consul at Hanoi and there was a Stand-
ard Oil man who shared the apartment with him. He had been down in
Haiphong within 24 hours of the bombardment, so that I had not just
Vietnamese propaganda but at least what I considered a fairly reliable,
almost eye witness of it. I thought his estimate was about 2,000 killed.
It might have been more.
The Chairman. It has been — I have read it — I don't remember
whether it was Bernard Fall's book or David Schoenbrun in his lecture
that estimated 6,000 Vietnamese were killed.
Mr. Moffat. My memory — it may be correct.
The Chairman. But it was an ultimatum directed at the Ho Chi
Minn Government ?
Mr. Moffat. It was an ultimatum directed at the — yes, Viet Minh
Government.
The Chairman. They gave him no time to clear out ?
Mr. Moffat. They gave the Vietnamese no time to carry out the
agreement.
The Chairman. That is more arbitrary than we are ; we gave them
3 days to clear out.
[Laughter.]
The Chairman. They didn't have time in 3 hours; it was obvious
they didn't expect them to ; they just wanted to precipitate it.
POPULARITY OF HO CHI MINH
Mr. White or both of you, I have read — I think it is in Eisenhower's
book, that if an election had been held at approximately this time,
1944, 1'945, I think he is reported to have said that Ho Chi Minh
would have received 80 percent of the popular vote.
Have you ever heard that statement ?
Mr. Moffat. I heard that statement, I think, attributed to Mr. Eisen-
hower or was it to Mr. Dulles? Anyway, everybody recognized
The Chairman. It was Eisenhower. I read it in the book myself,
"The Mandate for Change." I was going to ask what you think of it.
Was he really a popular figure ?
Mr. Moffat. Yes, sir.
The Chairman. Do you think that was a reasonable estimate ?
Mr. Moffat. Eighty or 75, 1 would certainly say yes.
198
The Chairman. He was very popular ?
Mr. Moffat. If not it was the anti-French feeling and he symbolized
it, so that even if they weren't for him, which many of them were be-
cause he had so symbolized the nationalist movement, they would have
voted for him.
The Chairman. What was your feeling, Mr. White ?
Mr. White. I agree. I believe it would be something on that order
of majority. To add to what Mr. Moffat has just said, which I agree
with too, Ho was the only really recognizable political figure operating
there at the time.
I don't — I am not suggesting that that was because he excluded
opposition. He was curious. I have met many world leaders in my life
before but he was the least sort of megalomaniac, if you will, of any
that I have ever met. He actually abjured standing on balconies, you
know, or popular appeals. When he went around he just walked
around the streets as anybody did, you know, with no official cars,
no pomp and panoply of any kind ; but he was about the only recog-
nizable person to vote for.
ho chi minh's background
The Chairman. You make him — I thought, in your initial state-
ment there — a very appealing figure. I mean, you said you were im-
pressed by him. Then you said small in his stature; he was a very
small man ?
Mr. White. Yes, tiny.
The Chairman. And quiet spoken ?
Mr. White. Yes, he suffered. He told me a little about his health.
He suffered from — during the Japanese occupation he was living in
the woods, in the jungle, and he had a bad case of tuberculosis, and as
Mr.
The Chairman. Tuberculosis ?
Mr. White. Yes, and Mr. Blum's report cites a group, an OSS
group, which went in with a doctor and gave him some penicillin and
so forth — not penicillin — sulpha drugs in those days, and he told me
that he was fairly convinced that that was responsible for his re-
covery from tuberculosis.
The Chairman. You said he spoke English better than you did
French. Had he visited America ?
Mr. White. Yes, he had.
The Chairman. Did he tell you anything about his experiences
here ?
Mr. White. Well, I was involved in writing several cover stories on
Ho in later days with Time magazine and Life, and although Ho
himself didn't tell me much about his travels, other than to mention
that he had been to the United States and he had seen
The Chairman. Where had he been in the United States ?
Mr. White. All he mentioned was New York; he mentioned he had
been to England and to Russia, and, of course, to France. And
The Chairman. How did he get to New York, as a tourist ?
Mr. White. Yes, he was a — steward.
The Chairman. Steward on a boat?
199
Mr. White. Steward on a boat ; yes, sir.
The Chairman. What kind of boat, do you know ?
Mr. White. I think it was a French boat.
The Chairman. French boat. How long did he stay in New York ?
Mr. White. I don't know. As we pieced this together from what re-
ports we could obtain, not from Ho in Time, that is, Time magazine, he
must have been in New York not a long time but I gathered 2 or
3 months.
The Chairman. Two or 3 months. Did he work in New York as
a steward, I mean, as a waiter ?
Mr. White. As a waiter ?
The Chairman. As a waiter?
Mr. White. Yes.
The Chairman. Do you know where ?
Mr. White. No, I can't — I can tell you some of the other places he
was where he worked. He surfaced in Paris ; he was not a waiter but a
dishwasher in the Continental Hotel in Paris. He also worked as a
photographer's assistant, developer and actually made some pictures.
He was interested in photography.
The Chairman. Photography?
Mr. White. Yes.
The Chairman. Did he tell you about his visit to the Versailles con-
ference ?
Mr. White. No, he did not.
The Chairman. It is reported he was there.
Mr. White. It has been reported and that is all in the record some-
place, but he just did not happen to mention it to me in our conversa-
tion.
The Chairman. Where did he learn English ? How did he happen to
learn English ?
Mr. White. Well, this brief exposure in the United States helped,
and
The Chairman. He must have been a quick learner if he learned
English in three months.
Mr. White. I believe so ; I believe so.
ho chi minh
The Chairman. You said he was very curious ?
Mr. White. Yes, that was one of the reasons I came away with not as
much knowledge from my several hours with him, because I spent as
much time answering questions as I did asking when I was with him.
The Chairman. Yes.
Mr. White. And, in his desire for information he was terribly eclec-
tic. He wanted to know everything about everything.
The Chairman. Was he in London? Did you say he had been in
London ?
Mr. White. Pardon ?
The Chairman. Did you say he had been in London, too ?
Mr. White. I didn't say he had been in London.
The Chairman. I seem to have heard that he had been.
Mr. White, I think so, too, but I can't remember responding to that.
200
The Chairman. I think somebody said he worked in the Ritz Hotel
in London, but I am not sure. Schoenbrun seemed to know him quite
well.
Mr. White. Yes. Dave knew him. As a young correspondent in
Paris David Schoenbrun met Ho when Ho came to this famous Fon-
tainbleu-Versailles conference to negotiate with the French.
The Chairman. Oh, yes.
Mr. White. And most of the other correspondents apparently in
Paris were either too busy or too unaware or whatever, and didn't pay
much attention to him ; but David Schoenbrun did invite him to dinner
and Ho showed up and they had a meal together and he saw him sev-
eral times on that occasion.
MEETING WITH HO CHI MINH, DECEMBER, 1946
The Chairman. Mr. Moffat, what was your impression of Ho ? How
did you react to him as an individual ?
Mr. Moffat. I was tremendously impressed with him.
The Chairman. Describe it a little for the record. We are all ignor-
ant and everybody is about him. We want to benefit by your experi-
ence. When did you meet him and tell us a little bit about what you
did.
Mr. Moffat. I went to call on him.
The Chairman. What year ? What time ?
Mr. Moffat. In December 1946.
The Chairman. Yes ?
Mr. Moffat. It was a week before the fighting broke out and it
was — I had asked for an appointment to meet him, and the report was
that he was ill, and nobody knew whether it was a diplomatic illness
or a bona fide illness. The next thing I knew, I was invited to come to
the palace at 5 :00 o'clock, I think it was, and I was trying to remem-
ber; I think there were one or two others present. Giam, not Giap.
O'Sullivan, our consul, and Giam, would be the equivalent of Under
Secretary in the Foreign Office. Ho was in bed.
The Chairman. He really was ill, you think ?
Mr. Moffat. Yes, he was. He talked for about 15 or 20 minutes. I
had no instructions; they had not come. We had discussed this
meeting before I left Washington. The big problem was how far the
Department was going to go on this anti-Communist angle which I was
rather worried about, and so I had no instructions and I really couldn't
say anything. I listened to what he said and I, of course, reported to
the Department and then I also included it in a diary letter which I
sent back to the office — my wife and the office — my wife was in the De-
partment, too — and that is included in the committee print. But,
frankly, I had a feeling just that I was in the presence of somebody
who was great, and I don't know how you quite define it.
The Chairman. I know.
Mr. Moffat. But
The Chairman. It doesn't happen too often.
Mr. Moffat. It does not happen too often.
The Chairman. That's right. Go ahead.
201
QUESTION REGARDING ALTERNATIVE TO HO
Mr. Moffat. Could I add one thing? When you were saying were
there any alternatives. I think you probably are aware that there was
a very big revolt against the French in 1930 and 1931, which finally
became quite a large military operation before they were able to put
it down; and there were nationalist leaders in that group. All except
Ho, and I imagine Giap and a few others of the Communist group,
all were captured and all were killed.
The result is when the next time came, and there was another smaller
revolt in 1941, which was put down by the French — the Japanese stood
aside and let them put it down — a great many more nationalist lead-
ers were eliminated. The net result was that any potential rival, you
might say, to Ho Chi Minli, had just been eliminated by the French
and he was the one outstanding nationalist left.
The Chairman. The only one able to survive ?
Mr. Moffat. Which is the reason that the Communists were able
in Indochina to capture the nationalist movement which they did not
in any other country in Southeast Asia.
DESCRIPTION OF HO CHI MINH
The Chairman. To return to Ho a bit, describe a bit — you said you
felt you were in the presence of a great man — just for the record, I
am very curious myself — describe a little more about him, your im-
pressions about him. Did you have the same feeling of his great
curiosity and his expectations of friendship for the United States?
What did he say ?
Mr. Moffat. He talked about the immediate — his desire for friend-
ship with the United States and for help. It was just not that type of
conversation where he talked around or be full of curiosity. He knew
that I had come from the State Department, It seemed he was hoping
that I would have some message for him and I was miserable not being
able to say anything. His quietness was, I think, one of the things and
I don't think it was a quietness of just being sick. I had a feeling of a
quiet personality that was
Mr. White. Reflective.
HO'S LETTERS TO U.S. GOVERNMENT NOT ACKNOWLEDGED
The Chairman. The Pentagon Papers say that he addressed eight
letters to the Government of the United States and they were never
acknowledged. Do you know anything about that ?
Mr. Moffat. Yes, sir ; I explained to Senator Percy about that.
The Chairman. I am sorry.
Air. Moffat. Letters to the President of the United States except
from heads of state, certainly from somebody who is in opposition to
the head of state of a friendly country, are not acknowledged because
as a matter of policy, the President can't begin engaging in correspond-
ence with people around the world; and that is just a matter of in-
ternational etiquette. They don't get acknowledged. I think if we
202
had, I think there would have been very, very severe repercussions —
it would have been almost tantamount to recognition and that would
have made — have meant a break with the French.
The Chairman. Have you ever seen the letters?
Mr. Moffat. Oh, yes.
The Chairman. What did they say ? Can you summarize the type
of things they said ?
Mr. Moffat. Very much the same. Again, if I remember them, that
he wanted American aid; he hoped for American support in their
nationalist struggle. They varied, I think, as I recall. The one that is
mentioned in the — in your study, in your committee print, is the one
where he really wanted us to throw the French off the Far Eastern
Commission, which was, of course, far more than just an appeal for
help.
The Chairman. Yes.
GENERAL GIAP
Tell me, did you meet General Giap ?
Mr. Moffat. Oh, yes, several times.
The Chairman. Could you give us a brief comment about him ?
Mr. Moffat. My memory of Giap was that — and I noticed in my
diary that he was the first of what I called the typical Commie — the
cartoon Commie that I met; in other words, he was absolutely im-
mobile as to face. He had no — I just couldn't get any reaction out of
him at all. So I just didn't take to him very much. I just felt his sort
of stoniness. On the other hand, I found a great many people who
knew him, French and others, who really knew him — I met him only
just at a cocktail party or reception or something, a couple of times —
all liked him immensely. One reason that he was so very bitter in this
fighting was that his wife had been killed by the French in one of
the — at some stage — I don't remember the details but I know that he
added a personal equation to his other feelings.
The Chairman. That is designed to do that.
Mr. White, did you meet Giap ?
Mr. White. Yes. I thought he was the waiter.
[Laughter.]
He came and lie stood quietly at one juncture when I was talking
to Ho for a, long time, and he was wearing sort of an open shirt and
shorts which was not particularly unusual but it was sort of the garb
that the houseboys often wore and it wasn't until later at some point in
the conversation that Ho turned to him to clarify himself on a point,
that I realized that he wasn't a waiter, but I found him — then subse-
quently I was to encounter him two or three times again and I rather
agree with Mr. Moffat's appraisal, that he was not the outgoing type
person that Ho was, and since he had some language problem we
didn't find a way to converse easily
The Chairman. He didn't speak English at all ?
Mr. White. No, he didn't speak English at all and my recollection
was that he was much more comfortable in Vietnamese or Annamite,
as the language was called, then, than he was in French, so we just
didn't get on.
203
DID THE CHINESE RELEASE HO CHI MINH FROM PRISON?
The Chairman. This is very interesting.
One other thing you reminded me of : I think I recall that Ho Chi
Minh was in prison in China when, along in 1943 or 1944 and that we or
someone inspired Chiang Kai-shek to release him in order to come
down and advise our OSS ; is that correct ?
Does either one of you have any knowledge about that, that he had
been in prison, the Chinese had caught him, I think, in Shanghai or
somewhere and put him in prison, but we had something to do with hav-
ing him released so he could come down and be of assistance in opposing
the Japanese ; is that a correct memory or not ?
Mr. Moffat. I don't know, sir.
The Chairman. Do you know ?
Mr. White. Mr. Fulbright, that has been reported. We carried that
in a dispatch or in a cover story at that time — done on him many years
later, but the inference was there was no way we could really confirm
it but that is one of the versions or one story that has been reported.
The Chairman. I know I read it somewhere and wondered whether
you knew anything about it — he didn't mention that to you ?
Mr. White. No, he did not.
The Chairman. He didn't have anything favorable to say about
the Chinese ?
IMPRISONMENT AND DEATH OF HO CHI MINH's SISTER
Mr. White. No, he did not. But I must confess, he did not parade
his personal situations at all. The only thing, the one he really men-
tioned in passing was the imprisonment and subsequent death of his
sister ; but he didn't dwell on that very much. He just said
The Chairman. He took those things philosophically, apparently ?
Mr. White. At least that was the appearance.
The Chairman. Appeared to be
Mr. White. And it was, however, it was dedication to his sister that
I heard people who knew him, you know, French people who had
known him before, that was given as part of the reason why he never
married.
The Chairman. He was imprisoned by whom? I mean, his sister
was imprisoned by whom ?
Mr. White. By the French.
The Chairman. By the French ?
Mr. White. Yes.
The Chairman. And incarcerated in the cages ?
Mr. White. Yes.
The Chairman. That is not designed to endear them, either. Mr.
Blum says he researched this and that the Chinese did release Ho
Chi Minh in order to enlist his assistance in opposing the Japanese
in Tonkin ; is that right ? With Lu Han, I think.
Mr. White. Yes.
president diem
The Chairman. There is one other character. Did either of you meet
President Diem ?
S3-605 0—73 14
204
Mr. Moffat. No, sir ; I didn't.
Mr. White. No, sir ; I didn't.
The Chairman. He came over here; he was in this country for a
while. He had been a member of the French Provincial Government.
Had he not been the governor of one of the provinces ? I wondered if
you could draw any comparison between Diem and Ho as individuals.
But neither of you met Diem.
Mr. Moffat. No.
Mr. White. I do know something as a student of the subject mat-
ter. He was a Maryknoll Brother, a lay brother, from the Catholic
church. In fact, as I recall, another one of his brothers was Arch-
bishop of Vietnam. I believe he did come up through the provincial
administration but it would have been as a French functionary.
The Chairman. Back in the thirties, something like that ?
Mr. White. Yes.
COMMENDATION OF WITNESSES
The Chairman. Anything else ? This has been extremely interesting.
I hate to impose on your time and keep you so late, but we don't often
run across anyone who has firsthand information about these historical
events. I think they are extremely important if this country is ever
to sort out its ideas and its prejudices and its misconceptions and be-
gin to think right about some of our relations. It is hard to get this
kind of material or to present it. I am sure you have presented it in
Life magazine, but under circumstances, I expect, which were not as
ominous as they are today. It may be by bringing it out again that
we could hopefully impress some people about and cause us to reflect
upon our present policy as well as our past ones and our future ones.
You have been extremely kind to come here.
Do you have anything at all you would like to add ?
Mr. Moffat. I would like to just make one comment, if I might, sir.
The Chairman. I would welcome any.
ECONOMIC THEORY OF U.S. MOVEMENT INTO S.E. ASIA
Mr. Moffat. Yesterday there was a question, a discussion, on the
economic theory of our movement into Southeast Asia, and a couple
of clauses from one of my papers was read in support of that theory.
You will note from one of those that I read today there is a reference
to the Open Door policy or in equivalent language. I favored the
Open Door policy in Indochina and in all of these countries, I think,
just basically as part of the general, liberal policy that all of us had
favored for many, many years, considering international trade as one
of the big facets of peace. I don't think I ever thought in terms of
seeking a place to put investments. I also felt that the Open Door
policy would be very beneficial to the Vietnamese and to the people in
those areas, who at that time were restricted very clearly to the
French and had no opportunity to do trade with others.
The third thing : I was concerned about Southeast Asia economically
because it was the source of two raw materials that were of great im-
portance to us, and we wanted to be sure we would have the op-
portunity to get them. One was tin; the other which we now forget
205
about in large part was natural rubber. At that stage, natural rubber
was still vital.
Synthetic rubber was just beginning to come in and was still only
at an experimental stage. I hoped our general policy would help break
down the tin and rubber cartels which were a severe handicap to
American imports of needed raw materials. Although I have heard
of people who feel we should go into these areas in order to make it
possible for American business to invest, certainly that was the last
thing I think any of us were thinking about at that stage.
The Chairman. There was a difference of view between the wit-
nesses yesterday on this point.
Mr. Moffat. I know there was, sir.
The Chairman. One gave great emphasis.
Mr. Moffat. I just want to say that was not the situation. The ob-
jectives I stated talking about trie Open Door were there for the rea-
sons I have given and no other.
The Chairman. That was certainly one point of view, and I suppose
it is always an element in it, but I believe Professor Schlesinger
thought it was much more complex than just being economics, even as
the dominant motive.
Do you have any other comment you care to make, Mr. White ?
Mr." White. No, Mr. Chairman, I don't believe I do.
COMMENDATION OF WITNESSES
The Chairman. We are certainly indebted to both of you gentlemen
for coming here. I know it is a great burden to you and few people
like to come before any committee. We have difficulty in getting good
witnesses, competent witnesses. You would be surprised how many
former members of Government have declined to participate in these
hearings, especially those intimately connected with these policies, so
it is a great help to have you come. We are very much obliged to you.
Thank you very much. If you should have any comments that occur
to you, we would welcome any comment ; you can write us.
COMMENDATION OF STAFF WORK
Mr. White. I would like to say I commend the committee on its staff
work in its handling of this hearing and the reports that have gone
forth.
The Chairman. I know the staff appreciates that and those of us
who helped select them appreciate it. We don't have many compliments
of that kind. Thank you very much.
(Whereupon, at 12 :50 p.m., the hearing was adjourned, to recon-
vene subject to the call of the chair.)
APPENDIX
THE ESSENTIAL DOMINO:
AMERICAN POLITICS AND VIETNAM
By Leslie H. Gelb
Reprinted From
FOREIGN
AFFAIRS
AN AMERICAN QVARTERLr REVIEW
APRIL 1972
(207)
208
THE ESSENTIAL DOMINO:
AMERICAN POLITICS AND VIETNAM
By Leslie H. Gelh
AS Henry Kissinger has written, public support is "the acid
l\ test of a foreign policy." For a President to be successful
•*• -^-in maintaining his nation's security he needs to believe, and
others need to believe, that he has solid support at home. It was
President Johnson's judgment that if the United States permitted
the fall of Vietnam to communism, American politics would turn
ugly and inward and the world would be a less safe place in which
to live. Later, President Nixon would declare: "The right way
out of Vietnam is crucial to our changing role in the world, and
the peace in the world." In order to gain support for these judg-
ments and the objectives in Vietnam which flowed from them, our
Presidents have had to weave together the steel-of-war strategy
with the strands of domestic politics.
Neither the Americans nor the Vietnamese communists had
good odds for a traditional military victory in Vietnam. Given
the mutual will to continue the war and self-imposed American
restraint in the use of force, stalemate was the most likely out-
come.
This common perception had a critical impact on the strategies
of both sides. It meant that the "winner" would be the one whose
will to persist gave out first. Hanoi's will, because of the nature
of its government, society and economy, and because the North
Vietnamese were fighting in and for their country, was firmer
by far than Washington's. Washington's will, because of the
vagaries of American politics and the widespread dislike of in-
terminable and indeterminate Asian land wars, presented an in-
viting target. For both sides, then, U.S. domestic politics —
public support and opposition to the war — was to be the key
stress point.
American public opinion was the essential domino. Our lead-
ers knew it. Hanoi's leaders knew it. Each geared its strategy —
both the rhetoric and the conduct of the war — to this fact.
Hanoi adopted what seems to have been a two-pronged strat-
egy to cause U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam by playing on Amer-
ican domestic politics. The first aim was to try to convince
Americans that unless U.S. forces withdrew, the killing of Amer-
209
460 FOREIGN AFFAIRS
icans would never end. Hanoi's leaders seemed to have hoped
that as the war dragged on, Americans would come to see a hope-
less portrait of corrupt Saigon leadership and an ineffective
South Vietnamese army. At the same time, Hanoi would seek to
demonstrate a willingness to match force with force at ever-in-
creasing levels. If the American public, or significant minorities
of the public, could be convinced of these factors, continuation
of the war by the U.S. leadership would become bad politics.
The second aim of Hanoi's strategy, as I imagine it, was to
provide a face-saving exit for American leaders. It would not be
enough — indeed, it might be dangerous from Hanoi's view — to
leave official Washington in a situation where withdrawal could
only mean defeat. That might lead to unlimited escalation of the
war. American leaders had to be assured that withdrawal could
take place without severe withdrawal symptoms. From time to
time, Hanoi offered settlement packages that were not without
appeal. These proposals, however, did not appeal to our leaders
because they were not looking for a face-saving way out, but for
a noncommunist South Vietnam.
Perhaps the surest sign that Hanoi's strategy made sense was
that our own leaders also believed that American politics was
the Achilles heel.
Officials rarely write memos with any explicit reference to
domestic affairs, and seldom even talk about them except to
friends and newspapermen off-the-record. The unfounded but
nevertheless potent myth about politics stopping at the water's
edge creates great pressure to keep one's mouth shut, to think and
speak of foreign affairs as if it were something sacred. After all,
foreign policy deals with the security of our nation, and this is
no subject for narrow political advantage. President Truman
once told a State Department official who dared to speak di-
rectly on the subject that he should not tell him about domestic
problems, but about "what is right."
The public literature emanating from the inner circles is
nearly silent on the connections between foreign policy and do-
mestic politics. And officials are almost as wary of talking about
domestic politics as they are of writing on the subject. We get
glimpses of those few instances in odd ways. For example, the
point of Kenneth O'Donnell's article in the August 7, 1970 issue
of Life is to assure us that President Kennedy was waiting for the
right moment to pull out of Vietnam. That right moment for
210
AMERICAN POLITICS AND VIETNAM 461
President Kennedy, O'Donnell declares, was after the 1964
presidential elections when the issue could no longer be used
against him. Or, we hear from close associates of President John-
son that on a few occasions he would guardedly talk on the sub-
ject. Later, in his memoirs, he wrote:
... I knew our people well enough to realize that if we walked away
from Vietnam and let Southeast Asia fall, there would follow a divisive and
destructive debate in our country. ... A divisive debate about "who lost Viet-
nam" would be, in my judgment, even more destructive to our national life
than the argument over China had been. . . . Our allies . . . throughout the
world would conclude that our word was worth little or nothing . . . Moscow
and Peking] could not resist the opportunity to expand their control into the
vacuum of power. . . . With Moscow and Peking . . . moving forward, we
would return to a world role to prevent their full takeover of Europe, Asia,
and the Middle East — after they had committed themselves.
Few will deny that what our Presidents chose to do or chose
not to do in Vietnam was very much tied to domestic politics.
Yet, the myth is potent, and official silence on the subject pre-
vails. Presidents suffer because the connections between foreign
and domestic affairs, while talked about privately, are not treated
in a systematic way. So far as one knows, critical assumptions
about what will or will not garner popular support are left un-
challenged. For example, nowhere in the executive branch of
government did one feel free to do a paper which said "Here is
how the right-wing could be contained if we accepted Hanoi's
best offer." In this way the President is supposed to "keep his
options open." As was the case in Vietnam, however, he may
succeed in trapping himself. Another cost of this silence is that
analysts trying to piece decisions back together for history are
left without evidence.
Academicians and public-opinion experts have helped to per-
petuate the myth in their own way by "demonstrating" that for-
eign policy simply is not a salient issue to the voter and that
whatever the President says and does goes. Presidents have, I
think, known better. Citizens may not single out national security
affairs as the basis for their votes — although war and peace issues
often are so mentioned — but the security area inevitably plays an
important part in determining their overall impression of how
the President is doing his job. Moreover, communications lead-
ers and "elites" judge the President's performance with regard
to national security, and the mood which they convey to the
public affects public appraisals of the man in the White House.
211
462 FOREIGN AFFAIRS
11
On the surface, it seemed that our Presidents should have no
special problems about U.S. goals in Vietnam. While no one
presumed that Asian land wars were popular, there was evident
general acceptance of U.S. worldwide security responsibilities
among the public, press and Congress. And yet, problems did
arise.
One problem grew out of how to talk publicly about U.S. goals
without tying our hands in Saigon and in negotiations. In Na-
tional Security Action Memorandum 52 of May 11, 1961, Presi-
dent Kennedy approved the objective of "prevent (ing) Commu-
nist domination of South Vietnam." In NSAM 288 of March 17,
1964, President Johnson's objective was defined as "an inde-
pendent non-Communist South Vietnam." But our leaders did
not choose to use this language when talking to the American
people. Public statements of goals came closest to the private
formulations in phrases like "stopping aggression." The classi-
fied language of the NSAMs was apparently deemed too nega-
tive and not in line with the American tradition. Something
positive and more in keeping with American mythology was
required, and so the public goats became "self-determination,"
"free elections," and "permitting the South Vietnamese freely to
determine their own future."
As ,a practical matter, self-determination language tended to
commit Washington to the existing Saigon government — perhaps
to a greater extent than even those who backed that regime de-
sired. Washington's representatives in Saigon made much of the
necessity and virtue of holding elections. Elections, so Saigon's
leaders were told, would help to sell the war to the American
people. When Saigon's leaders obliged, held elections and pre-
dictably won them, Washington found itself confronted with a
government that had become "legitimate." And this legitimacy
conferred upon the winners increased bargaining strength. The
Thieu and Ky power groups were thereby better able to resist
pressures for reform. Legitimacy in American eyes also invested
their regime with an enhanced voice in negotiations. As an ally,
Saigon had the right to consultations. As a legitimate govern-
ment, Saigon expected and received the right to approve the
beginning of negotiations and the terms of settlement. As a con-
sequence, attaining a settlement that did not ensure the perpetua-
tion of the incumbent Saigon regime became highly improbable.
212
AMERICAN POLITICS AND VIETNAM 463
Although it must be said that many Washington policy-makers
were not troubled by these problems, there were also many who
both shared official aims and wanted reform and flexibility.
These people found themselves without leverage.
A second problem was how to talk publicly about goals with-
out unleashing pressures for the unlimited use of force. While
the objective of a noncommunist South Vietnam was specific,
our leaders did not want to employ maximum force to achieve it.
President Johnson prohibited use of U.S. ground and air forces
in Cambodia, ground forces in Laos, invasion of North Vietnam;
he also restricted air power in the North. He did not want to
risk a wider war and he sought to minimize civilian casualties.
But unlimited ends, in time, are bound to lead to a call for un-
limited means and the possibility always existed that popular
frustration or passion would bring about irresistible demands to
make means consistent with ends.
A third problem developed in 1966 as the ends of the war
themselves came into question. From this point on, President
Johnson was faced with a delicate choice. On the one hand, he
could have chosen to wave the "bloody flag" and infuse the war
with popular emotion. This, in the President's estimation, would
have lit right-wing fires to win the war, thus eroding barriers
against the all-out use of force. And once these barriers were torn
down, so Lyndon Johnson apparently reasoned, right-wing de-
mands could not be controlled. Such a strategy also would have
been incompatible with the President's political style, which
emphasized consensus above all. On the other hand, he could run
parallel to this line by challenging his critics with innuendo and
with the argument that fighting locally in Vietnam was prevent-
ing the outbreak of large-scale aggression elsewhere. President
Johnson picked this course. Instead of insinuating that his critics
were traitors or communists, he called them "nervous Nellies"
and "prophets of gloom and doom." Instead of holding parades
down Pennsylvania Avenue, he held award ceremonies in the
Oval Office. As the war dragged on, however, none of this was
sufficient to quell the growing opposition.
Ill
The fact that the war was dragging on related in part to the
historical roots of the conflict in Vietnam and to the means which
Presidents Kennedy and Johnson chose to fight it. Gradual esca-
213
464 FOREIGN AFFAIRS
lation was the chosen strategy for fighting the war. This fitted
in intellectually with the Kennedy-Johnson military doctrine of
flexible and controlled response. In Vietnam, it meant a "slow
squeeze" bombing policy for North Vietnam and an attrition
policy for South Vietnam. Decisions about means, however, were
based upon judgments about both the least risky way to fight the
war and the best way to maintain public support at home.
The constraints which domestic politics imposed on the air
war against the North were aimed at minimizing civilian casu-
alties and the loss of pilots. This meant avoiding key popula-
tion centers and other highly defended areas. Such constraints
were reinforced by diplomatic judgments which sought to mini-
mize the risk of confrontation with China and Russia. (All this,
however, did not prevent the bombing of most fixed targets and
the dropping of more explosive tonnage than in all World
War II.) The strategic decision to bomb in a gradual but rising
pattern (Rolling Thunder) rather than a simultaneous whole
system campaign (the Joint Chiefs of Staff [JCS] eight-week
plan) was probably made on diplomatic grounds.
It is also true that the bombing itself became a salient political
issue as pressures to begin negotiations increased. While Amer-
ican right-wing and governmental leaders kept insisting on ma-
jor concessions for stopping the bombing, doves argued that it
should be stopped only in return for Hanoi's promise to begin
talks. Whether and on what terms to stop the bombing emerged
as the most symbolic political issue of the war in 1967 and 1968.
Domestic politics imposed a dominant constraint on the size
and development of the ground war in the South as well. As
many U.S. servicemen as possible could be sent to Vietnam as
quickly as possible for short terms of service, subject only to a
presidential prohibition against calling up the Reserves. In
accordance with established military procedure, U.S. force pos-
ture was designed to expand by means of Active Reserve and Na-
tional Guard call-ups. But to do so would be to disrupt lives of
many American families. Because the President did not want to
incur this political liability, he chose to deplete and weaken U.S.
forces stationed in Europe and America and to increase draft
calls. The burden fell on the young and the poor; for this and
other reasons, political opposition to the war tended to congeal
around these groups and their legislative allies. Not until March
1968 did the JCS and their political allies outside the govern-
214
AMERICAN POLITICS AND VIETNAM 465
ment succeed in forcing the President's hand on the Reserve issue,
and then he acceded only to a 25,000-man call-up.
If, after 1965, force decisions called for the maximum pos-
sible, given domestic and diplomatic constraints, domestic poli-
tics dictated the minimum necessary disruption of American life.
This was the case not only with respect to Reserve call-ups, but
with respect to the economics of the war. President Johnson
wanted guns and butter. He did not inform his chief economic
advisers of the fall 1965 decision to achieve a force level of 175,-
000 men. He resisted pressures for increased taxes throughout
1966. Finally, in late 1967, he asked for a ten percent surtax, but
this fell far short of paying for the mounting costs of the war.
Moreover, he refused to let congressional leaders call it a war
tax. Short-run prosperity was purchased at the price of long-run
inflation.
Domestic politics also impelled the leaders of the Johnson ad-
ministration to become fire-fighters. Actions in Vietnam, if not
dictated, were often shaped by daily criticisms at home. The
many false starts on the pacification program came in response
to charges by legislators and journalists that Johnson was not
doing enough about "the other war." If legislators insisted that
Saigon's forces do more of the fighting, willy-nilly, the size of
those forces was increased. No matter that the issue was quality,
not size. Size could be fixed faster. And so it was with many
other issues as the Administration sought vainly to paper over
critical television reports and front-page news stories with short-
run solutions.
But short-term fixes and a policy of not demanding domestic
sacrifices were not enough. The President also had to manipulate
time horizons carefully. Just as Hanoi tried to portray the war
as never-ending, Washington had to feed the impression of near-
term winnability. The public would not stand for gradualism if
it promised only open-ended fighting with continued U.S. fatal-
ities. Thus was born the policy of controlled optimism. Pressure
from the White House was felt throughout the government, into
the field, down to the very bottom of the command structure.
Show progress politically and militarily! Visitors to the Oval
Office would be treated to a look at President Johnson pulling
Ambassador Lodge's or Ambassador Bunker's "weekly nodis"
cable out of his inside jacket pocket and hearing how things were
getting better. Pointed questions about when the war would end
215
466 FOREIGN AFFAIRS
were side-stepped if possible. Only if answers had to be provided
would the truth be admitted. (Fortunately for Administration
strategy, the news media made little of these isolated revelations.)
Admitting to the public that the war would take time, officials
seemed to have reasoned, would play into Hanoi's hands. So,
whenever possible, the Administration assured the public of ulti-
mate success. Some officials were allowed to climb out on a limb
and predict imminent victory. Others volunteered their genuine
optimism. The net effect was to lead the public to think that the
end was near. But the dilemma of this strategy could not have
been lost on our leaders. Optimism without results would only
work for so long; after that, it would produce the credibility gap.
IV
Behind the fall into the credibility gap and beyond the Presi-
dent's domestic strategy, there resided a vital and unquestioned
assumption — that America was basically hawkish and that the
forces of conservatism, if not reaction, would always prevail over
the liberal groups. This assumption probably underpinned Pres-
ident Kennedy's remarks to Kenneth O'Donnell and Senator
Mansfield in 1963 that he was waiting until after the next elec-
tion before changing direction in Vietnam. In the ensuing years,
President Johnson occasionally lectured reporters and his own
aides on the politics of the war. He is supposed to have told them
that they were worrying about the wrong domestic opposition.
They were worrying, so the stories ran, about the liberals and
the doves, but the real problem was the conservatives. They had
"done in" President Truman over China. They still held the
reins of power in the congressional committees. They were the
difference between the success and failure of Great Society leg-
islation. And waiting in the wings was latent right-wing Mc-
Carthyism, threatening to strike at all that liberals held dear if a
President of the United States ever lost a war. Although none of
these stories can be taken at face value, the point is there — the
nation, in the opinion of our leaders, would not tolerate the loss of
a "free" country to communism.
Were Presidents Kennedy and Johnson correct in their esti-
mation of American politics as essentially conservative? Was the
strategy of gradualism consistent with these assumptions? And
was this strategy the best way of convincing Hanoi that they
had the public support necessary to stay the course in Vietnam?
216
AMERICAN POLITICS AND VIETNAM 467
The evidence on the first question is mixed. For the assump-
tion that U.S. politics were essentially conservative, we have the
facts that: professional politicians widely held this view; con-
servatives did influence the Congress disproportionately to their
numbers; President Truman did suffer because of China and
Korea; public opinion polls from 1954 until a year ago did show
a majority of Americans against losing South Vietnam to com-
munism. Against this assumption, we have the facts that: the
alternatives in many of the Vietnam polls (unilateral withdrawal
or annihilation of the enemy) gave the respondent little choice;
other polls showed a majority against losing to communism, but
also showed a majority against using U.S. forces to accomplish
this; polls on foreign affairs strongly tend to follow the presi-
dential lead; the President's overall popularity was dropping in
the polls; and the majority of Americans eventually did turn
against the war, or at least against fighting at any sizable cost in
lives and dollars.
Perhaps the answer is that our Presidents were right about the
conservative thrust of American politics until March 1968, and
that it took the experience of the Vietnam War to deflate public
passions about losing countries to communism.
The answer to the second question — did the strategy of grad-
ualism fit the assumption of hawkishness? — is yes, but more than
that as well. On the surface, the strategy was directed toward
the right wing. As the war went on, gradualism did become the
functional equivalent of escalation. And escalation, in turn, was
supposed to meet not only the increasing military needs in the
field, but appease the hawks at home as well. Yet, the right wing
was not satisfied. They always wanted much more than Johnson
would give. And the President must have known that this would
be the case, for his strategy was much more complex than a
simple effort to placate the Right.
On a deeper level, gradualism was designed to control both
the Right and the Left. With respect to the management of the
domestic aspects of the war, it rested implicitly on the belief that
asking the public to swallow the war whole would backfire,
leading to irresistible pressures either to win or get out. It was
the product of the old consensus game. The key was to stake out
the middle ground. Everyone was to be given the illusion that the
war would soon be over. The Right was to be given escalation.
The Left was to be given occasional peace overtures. The middle
217
468 FOREIGN AFFAIRS
would not be asked to pay for the war. The Right would be as-
sured that South Vietnam would not be lost. The Left would be
frightened into submission by the specter of McCarthyism. But
the key to the whole strategy was phasing.
The right-wing reaction was the ultimate nightmare. This was
to be forestalled and the hawks controlled by not losing, by esca-
lating and by promising victory. But given these parameters the
immediate problem was to keep the doves, the liberals and the
Left in line.
In the short run, President Johnson was more wary of the Left
than of the Right. The McCarthyite nightmare might come to
pass if the United States lost Vietnam. But it could happen only
if the doves and the Left first gained the ascendancy, only if their
opposition to the war spread to the middle and across to the
Right. The Left and the liberals were the only ones who would
openly press for withdrawal, for "losing." The Right would be
unhappy, disgruntled, but they would never press the case for
withdrawal to the public. The Left and the doves would — and,
to a large extent, they prevailed.
All this raises the final question — was the President's strategy
the best way of making Hanoi believe that U.S. Presidents would
be able to continue the war until North Vietnam quit? My guess
is that Hanoi's leaders not only were confident they could outlast
gradualism in the field, but also were aware that such a strategy
was a sign of the domestic political weakness of our Presidents.
The "slow-squeeze" approach showed Hanoi two things. On
the one hand, it signaled that America could always do more mili-
tarilv, while on the other, it revealed that the President would
J i
not do all that was necessary to win. A step-by-step strategy of
threat can spring either from conviction or endemic weakness.
U.S. policy toward Vietnam sprang from both. Manipulation by
force or "compellence" had great appeal as a war strategy. But
with each passing year of war the domestic political position of
the President grew weaker.
Over time, the use of threats could not hide the President's
fear that the fulfillment of his threats would be as costly to the
United States as to North Vietnam. Going all-out to win appar-
ently presented President Johnson with a double nightmare. If
the public went along, it might portend war with China or Rus-
218
AMERICAN POLITICS AND VIETNAM 469
sia and a garrison state at home. If the public balked and wanted
to "bug out," a McCarthyite reaction might ensue. And yet,
going less than all-out would not be enough to win militarily —
at least for many years. Only by accepting the risks of using
maximum force and only by asking for domestic sacrifices could
President Johnson have convinced Hanoi that the United States
had crossed the threshold from a policy of questionable persis-
tence to a war of no return, and that the American commitment
to the war was irrevocable.
Thus, President Johnson's dilemma was stark. He would not
try maximum force to win, because that would risk World
War III. He would not replay Vietnam as China 1949, lose it
and take the case to the public, because that would risk another
round of McCarthyism. He would, as a last resort, replay Viet-
nam as Korea, hoping to outlast the other side and getting them
to agree to stay on their side of the line — and risk wearing down
his nation and countrymen.
President Johnson could look back at the Korean WTar and
think it was bad, but not as bad as losing China. Harry Truman
was roundly attacked for his self-restraint in fighting the Korean
War — and yet, most Americans saw it as a courageous decision,
and the history books were filled with praise for the beleagured
President. China ruined President Truman. That is, it ruined
him politically at that time— and its "loss" did ignite McCarthy-
ism. But in the perspective of those very same history books,
President Truman's decision to back away from the corrupt
regime of Chiang and accept the tide of Mao was hailed as his
most courageous and wisest hour. Lyndon Johnson did not see it
that way. He would continue with middle-course actions in Viet-
nam, playing off Left and Right against one another at home. This
strategy satisfied neither hawks nor doves; nor did it face down
the North Vietnamese. The costs were staggering and are still
incalculable — as are the costs of what might have been had the
United States withdrawn or gone "all-out." And yet, President
Johnson played his hand well enough to prevent the essential
domino from falling and to persist in his policy.
VI
On January 25, 1972, President Nixon publicly revealed two
peace proposals which Henry Kissinger had made secretly to
Hanoi. One proposal dealt with an overall settlement, including
219
470 FOREIGN AFFAIRS
free elections "run by an independent body representing all po-
litical forces in South Vietnam," with international supervision,
and with President Thieu stepping down from office prior to the
vote. The second proposal, a military settlement carved out from
the overall settlement, offered "a total withdrawal from South
Vietnam of all U.S. forces and other foreign forces . . . within
six months" provided that Hanoi agree to a phased return of
U.S. prisoners of war and an Indochina-wide ceasefire "imple-
ment (ing) the principle that all armed forces of the countries of
Indochina must remain within their national frontiers." Certain
ambiguities in these proposals with respect to the powers of the
electoral commission, the timing of the mutual withdrawal, fu-
ture U.S. military aid to Saigon, and the phasing of a settlement,
could indicate a new American flexibility. Still, the President did
make clear that Hanoi had ignored and, in effect, had found
both packages unacceptable. Hanoi has long opposed both elec-
tions controlled by other than a coalition government and a cease-
fire-mutual withdrawal as too risky for its supporters in South
Vietnam. Yet, Americans were bound to see the President's offers
as reasonable, as a fair compromise. The President did manage
to quiet Vietnam critics.
But the history of popular and political reaction to presiden-
tial peace overtures is filled with peaks and valleys. Both John-
son and Nixon have been able to gain renewed support in the
short run only to lose it as their proposals proved non-negotiable
and as the realities of the war again reassert themselves. As
American troop levels decline, U.S. bargaining power evapo-
rates. While a good case can be made that either of the "new"
offers are in Hanoi's interest to accept, Hanoi seems likely to
continue to reject them. Their aim appears to be not only with-
drawal of the direct U.S. military presence, but the cessation of
all military assistance to the Saigon regime, including naval and
air support from beyond Indochina itself. At this time, the odds
are they will settle for nothing less. The war will go on. And
because the politics of the war are so fragile, it still behooves us
to take a closer look at where we stand on Vietnam in America.
President Nixon has defined the U.S. objective in Vietnam in
the same overall terms as did President Johnson. In his February
25, 1971, "Foreign Policy Report," President Nixon affirmed
that with respect to both negotiations and Vietnamization, "We
seek the opportunity for the South Vietnamese people to deter-
ai-fin=, n
220
AMERICAN POLITICS AND VIETNAM 471
mine their own political future without outside interference."
With the invasion of Laos and with ever-receding possibilities
for a negotiated settlement, the goal of Vietnamization was clari-
fied to mean "providing a reasonable chance for the South Viet-
namese to defend themselves." Some were led to believe that this
meant American forces would be totally withdrawn with the
President hoping for a "decent interval" to elapse after that full
withdrawal and before a communist takeover, so that our respon-
sibility for the collapse of the Saigon government would be di-
minished. Others interpreted it as merely an indication that we
are progressively turning over the fighting to the Saigon govern-
ment. Still others saw it as the old objective of "an independent
noncommunist South Vietnam" and as a way of preserving the
Thieu regime. Dressed in new, moderate words because the war
itself is being deeply questioned, the Nixon goal has occasioned
more controversy than President Johnson's. But it has also af-
forded the President the flexibility necessary for troop reduc-
tions.
By May 1972, the U.S. troop ceiling in Vietnam will be 69,000
men. And the President has promised another troop withdrawal
announcement before that time. If Hanoi continues to reject the
Nixon peace proposals, Vietnamization will result in the main-
tenance of two American residual forces as long as is necessary:
one in Vietnam providing essentially logistical support, and the
other (not counted as part of the force ceiling) in Thailand and
on carriers off the Vietnamese shore providing air power. It cer-
tainly includes continuing economic and military assistance to
Saigon at close to $2 billion per year as well.
The Vietnamization policy has produced a different domestic
political problem than President Johnson's policy of escalation.
For President Johnson, the problem was how many troops could
be put into Vietnam and profitably employed despite tenuous
domestic support. For President Nixon, the problem has been
how few troops can be withdrawn while maintaining a military
balance in Vietnam but still assuaging the growing domestic
opposition.
The issue for both Presidents was how to balance military risks
in the field with conflicting political risks at home. President
Johnson, who was not faced with serious domestic opposition to
the war until March 1968, took few risks with the situation in
Vietnam. After opinion turned against the war, President John-
221
472 FOREIGN AFFAIRS
son paid for this earlier decision with the loss of political strength.
President Nixon has been assuming risks on both scales. He has
taken chances with popular support by ordering the invasions of
Cambodia and Laos and the "protective reaction" bombing
strikes against North Vietnam. But he has also run risks in South
Vietnam by reducing forces faster than the U.S. military deemed
safe. The combination of moves has led to a reduction in Ameri-
can deaths and casualties (from over 500 per week in 1968 to
about 50 per week at the beginning of 1972) and costs (from
about $25 billion in 1968 to about $7 billion for 1972) . The mili-
tary situation has remained stable in Vietnam. For the Presi-
dent's purposes, his strategy has been an apparent success at home
and in Vietnam — at least in the wake of his January 25th speech.
On one level, President Nixon seems to have succeeded in
neutralizing Vietnam as a prime issue in the forthcoming No-
vember election. As Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird said in a
television interview: "The American people understand the dif-
ference between addition and subtraction." U.S. troops have been
withdrawn from Vietnam on schedule and even ahead of the
schedule of presidential announcements. The winding down of
the war and the steep drop in American casualties, according to
this view, have defused the opposition.
VII
Political pundits have observed what was there for all of us
to see — the general subsiding of active criticism of the Presi-
dent's Vietnam policy. Such criticism no longer dominated the
news media in the week preceding Nixon's China visit. Because
they seemed to illustrate the consequences of the President's pol-
icy, the invasion of Cambodia and the subsequent tragedy at
Kent State in 1970 probably represented the high point of op-
position. But a curious phenomenon developed thereafter. While
opposition to the war widened throughout the United States, the
group of active critics seemingly narrowed to the political Left.
More Americans were against the war, but fewer were doing
anything about their beliefs. President Nixon reaped another
political benefit from Cambodia — it defused right-wing criti-
cism of war policy. Conservatives seemed gratified that this
sanctuary finally had been invaded and pleased by the subse-
quent U.S. troop reductions. Unlike Johnson, Nixon did not have
to worry about his right flank from this point on.
222
AMERICAN POLITICS AND VIETNAM 473
While questioning of the war by Congressmen and Senators
became more widespread, and while amendments were passed
which placed limits on U.S. involvement in Cambodia and Laos,
the McGovern-Hatfield Amendment to set a deadline for with-
drawal of all American forces failed by a larger vote in 1971
than in 1970. The political thrust of congressional opposition did
not succeed in compelling the President to accept total with-
drawal by a certain date in exchange for POWs only, but it did
succeed in making escalation of the war more improbable and in
hastening troop reductions. In other words, congressional opposi-
tion to the war increased, but legislators still showed themselves
ready to follow the President's lead as long as U.S. troops were
being withdrawn, U.S. casualties were being reduced and as long
as it looked as if Vietnamization was working.
On a different level, however, Vietnam seems to remain a ma-
jor political issue. An October 1971 Gallup report ranked Viet-
nam right behind economic problems and well ahead of crime,
race, poverty and other matters on the list of "the most important
problems facing this country today." One Harris poll showed
that a majority of the American people believed that the war in
Vietnam was immoral. A February 1971 Gallup poll found that
61 percent believed that the war was a mistake while only 28
percent felt that it was not. More revealing are the responses in
Gallup's August 1971 report where it was asked: "Suppose one
candidate for Congress . . . said that he favors getting all U.S.
armed forces out of Vietnam by July 1 of next year, and he is op-
posed by a candidate who says we must leave about 50,000 troops
there to help the South Vietnamese. Other things being equal,
which candidate would you prefer?" Sixty-one percent favored
complete withdrawl, while 28 percent wanted to leave troops and
11 percent had no opinion. More importantly for President
Nixon, Gallup claimed in his June 1971 report that the Presi-
dent faces a "giant-size credibility gap on Vietnam." In response
to the question: "Do you think that the Nixon administration is
or is not telling the public all they should know about the Viet-
nam war?," 24 percent said "is" and 67 percent said "is not." And
despite the President's promises to end the war, 51 percent of the
respondents believed that the war will last two years or more, or
never end. At bottom, President Nixon's credibility gap has the
same sources as President Johnson's — promises of an end to a war
that does not end.
223
474 FOREIGN AFFAIRS
The results of these polls notwithstanding, critics of the war
themselves seem to believe that the President has captured the
electoral high ground. Most of these critics have switched the
terms of their attack from arguing that the President's policy
will not work to arguing that it is immoral and will only per-
petuate the war and the consequences of the war. This tacit con-
cession to the progress of Vietnamization and to the political
success of the President's latest peace proposal at once evokes
the true feelings of the critics and their political weakness. Their
moral argument assumes a strong public interest in Vietnam, but
in reality it seems to be that while the American public is in-
creasingly opposed to the war, the majority really does not want
to hear about it. Moreover, if the plight of people in Biafra and
more recently in Bangladesh — to say nothing of the My Lai mas-
sacres— did not touch the moral sensitivity of even a fraction of
Americans, it is doubtful that the specter of Vietnamese killing
Vietnamese would stir the national conscience either. As long as
fewer Americans are in Vietnam, fewer Americans are being
killed and the cost of the war is being reduced, opposition to the
President's policy will be unlikely to change that policy.
All of these political calculations are based on the assumption
that the situation in Vietnam in the fall of 1972 will not be ap-
preciably different from what it is early this spring. What
would happen politically in the United States if the situation
were deteriorating in one way or another? One scenario would
have the North Vietnamese stepping up their military attacks,
defeating the Saigon government forces, and on the verge of
nullifying Vietnamization. Such an eventuality might lead many
Americans to believe that four years of Nixon's policy had been
for naught, that essentially the United States was back to where
it was in 1965. It is unlikely, however, that Vietnamization will
prove to be such an immediate failure. The North Vietnamese
forces are weaker and the Saigon forces stronger than most
critics had predicted they would be a year or three years ago.
Therefore, the kind of collapse posited in this scenario is highly
improbable. But should it come to pass, latent opposition to the
war would be rekindled and the President would be in a very
difficult position at home.
A second scenario would have the North Vietnamese launch-
ing countrywide offensives with spotty victories, and the United
States in retaliation carrying out a continuing program of air
224
AMERICAN POLITICS AND VIETNAM 475
strikes against population and population-related targets in
North Vietnam. This scenario seems more likely than the first.
President Nixon has promised on many occasions to take "deci-
sive action" in the event Hanoi increases the tempo of fighting
in the South, and he has on a number of occasions carried out
that threat. While it is true that past congressional, media and
popular reactions to these "protective-reaction" bombing raids
against North Vietnam have not been widespread, the image of
U.S. planes hitting new targets in North Vietnam right before
election time would remind the American people that the war
was still going on. Latent opposition to the war would again
emerge, to the probable disadvantage of the President.
If the war heats up in the summer and fall, it will be a polit-
ical issue in the November elections. And it will be a bitter issue.
Neither Republicans nor Democrats will want for superlative
and invective. But no matter who is elected President in 1972,
Vietnam will continue to take its toll on American society. If
President Nixon is reelected and the war grinds on indetermi-
nately, the youth and the intellectuals of our nation will become
ever more alienated. This is not a large group of people, but they
are precious to the national conscience. If a Democrat is elected
who is prepared to meet all of Hanoi's demands, end the war and
not provide the Saigon government with any assistance whatever,
he will be charged with having "snatched defeat from the jaws
of victory." President Johnson's nightmare of the right-wing
reaction could well become a reality.
The only somewhat hopeful way out of this dilemma is for
President Nixon now to share responsibility with the present
Congress in offering the sole proposal that still might break the
negotiating deadlock — a terminal date for the withdrawal of all
U.S. forces and an end to all U.S. bombing in Indochina in re-
turn for the safe withdrawal of forces and the phased return of
POWs. As I write, the President has not yet made this proposal.
The nation, I believe, would unite behind this approach. Such
unity would not be without impact on Hanoi's leaders, whatever
their internal differences are, at this moment, with respect to a
settlement of the war. For while Hanoi's leaders may not be able
to agree to propose such a solution, they may be able to agree
to accept it.
REPRINT 206
Vietnam:
The System Worked
by LESLIE H. GELB
THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION
WASHINGTON DC 1971
(225)
226
REPRINT 206
Credit: Reprinted August 1971, with permission, from Foreign Policy, Number 3,
Summer 1971, pp. 140-67. © 1971 by National Affairs, Inc.
The Author: Leslie H. Gelb is a Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Pro-
gram at the Brookings Institution.
Note: The interpretations and conclusions in Brookings reprints are those of the
authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the staff, officers, or trustees of the
Brookings Institution or of organizations that support its research.
BROOKINGS REPRINTS
Selected articles by Brookings authors are reprinted from books and
journals as Brookings reprints. Brookings also publishes research reports,
which summarize the highlights of Brookings books. Upon payment of
$5.00 annually, individuals, libraries, or organizations may subscribe at
any time to the Research Report Series and receive as they come off the
press the 10-15 reprints and the 15-25 research reports which are pub-
lished in a year's time, as well as the quarterly Bulletin and the Annual
Report of the Institution. Subscribers to the Research Report Series are
also entitled to a 20% discount on all Brookings books (on cash orders,
Brookings pays postage and handling), when they identify themselves as
Series subscribers.
Single copies of reprints may be obtained without charge (one to four
copies of same or different titles gratis). For more than four reprints, there
is a charge of 250 each, and cash must accompany orders of less than
$10.00.
Order from:
Publications Sales
THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION
1775 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20036
227
VIETNAM:
THE SYSTEM WORKED
by Leslie H. Gelb
I he story of United States policy toward
Vietnam is either far better or far worse
than generally supposed. Our Presidents and
most of those who influenced their decisions
did not stumble step by step into Vietnam,
unaware of the quagmire. U.S. involvement
did not stem from a failure to foresee
consequences.
Vietnam was indeed a quagmire, but most
of our leaders knew it. Of course there were
optimists and periods where many were
genuinely optimistic. But those periods were
infrequent and short-lived and were invari-
ably followed by periods of deep pessimism.
Very few, to be sure, envisioned what the
Vietnam situation would be like by 1968.
Most realized, however, that "the light at the
end of the tunnel" was very far away — if not
finally unreachable. Nevertheless, our Presi-
dents persevered. Given international com-
pulsions to "keep our word" and "save face,"
domestic prohibitions against "losing," and
their personal stakes, our leaders did "what
was necessary," did it about the way they
wanted, were prepared to pay the costs, and
plowed on with a mixture of hope and doom.
They "saw" no acceptable alternative.
Three propositions suggest why the United
States became involved in Vietnam, why the
process was gradual, and what the real ex-
pectations of our leaders were:
First, U.S. involvement in Vietnam is not
mainly or mostly a story of step by step, in-
advertent descent into unforeseen quicksand.
It is primarily a story of why U.S. leaders
considered that it was vital not to lose Viet-
nam by force to Communism. Our leaders
believed Vietnam to be vital not for itself,
but for what they thought its "loss" would
mean internationally and domestically. Pre-
Gtlb
vious involvement made further involvement
more unavoidable, and, to this extent, com-
mitments were inherited. But judgments of
Vietnam's "vitalness" — beginning with the
Korean War — were sufficient in themselves
to set the course for escalation.
Second, our Presidents were never actually
seeking a military victory in Vietnam. They
were doing only what they thought was
minimally necessary at each stage to keep
Indochina, and later South Vietnam, out of
Communist hands. This forced our Presidents
to be brakemen, to do less than those who
were urging military victory and to reject
proposals for disengagement. It also meant
that our Presidents wanted a negotiated
settlement without fully realizing (though
realizing more than their critics) that a civil
war cannot be ended by political compromise.
Third, our Presidents and most of their
lieutenants were not deluded by optimistic
reports of progress and did not proceed on
the basis of wishful thinking about winning
a military victory in South Vietnam. They
recognized that the steps they were taking
were not adequate to win the war and that
unless Hanoi relented, they would have to do
more and more. Their strategy was to perse-
vere in the hope that their will to continue —
if not the practical effects of their actions
— would cause the Communists to relent.
Each of these propositions is explored
below.
/. Ends. "We Can't Afford to Lose"
Those who led the United States into
Vietnam did so with their eyes open, knowing
why, and believing they had the will to
succeed. The deepening involvement was not
inadvertent, but mainly deductive. It flowed
with sureness from the perceived stakes and
attendant high objectives. U.S. policy dis-
played remarkable continuity. There were not
dozens of likely "turning points." Each post-
war President inherited previous commit-
ments. Each extended these commitments.
Each administration from 1947 to 1969
HO.
HI.
228
believed that it was necessary to prevent the
loss of Vietnam and, after 1954, South
Vietnam by force to the Communists. The
reasons for this varied from person to person,
from bureaucracy to bureaucracy, over time
and in emphasis. For the most part, however,
they had little to do with Vietnam itself. A
few men argued that Vietnam had intrinsic
strategic military and economic importance,
but this view never prevailed. The reasons
rested on broader international, domestic,
and bureaucratic considerations.
Our leaders gave the international repercus-
sions of "losing" as their dominant explicit
reason for Vietnam's importance. During the
Truman Administration, Indochina's impor-
tance was measured in terms of French-
American relations and Washington's desire
to rebuild France into the centerpiece of
future European security. After the cold war
heated up and after the fall of China, a French
defeat in Indochina was also seen as a defeat
for the policy of containment. In the Eisen-
hower years, Indochina became a "testing
ground" between the Free World and Com-
munism and the basis for the famous "domino
theory" by which the fall of Indochina would
lead to the deterioration of American security
around the globe. President Kennedy publicly
reaffirmed the falling domino concept. His
primary concern, however, was for his "rep-
utation for action" after the Bay of Pigs fiasco,
the Vienna meeting with Khrushchev, and
the Laos crisis, and in meeting the challenge
of "wars of national liberation" by counter-
insurgency warfare. Under President Johnson,
the code word rationales became Munich,
credibility, commitments and the U.S. word,
a watershed test of wills with Communism,
raising the costs of aggression, and the prin-
ciple that armed aggression shall not be
allowed to succeed. There is every reason to
assume that our leaders actually believed what
they said, given both the cold war context in
which they were all reared and the lack of
contradictory evidence.
With very few exceptions, then, our leaders
Gelb
since World War II saw Vietnam as a vital
factor in alliance politics, U.S. -Soviet-Chinese
relations, and deterrence. This was as true in
1950 and 1954 as it was in 1961 and 1965. The
record of United States military and economic
assistance to fight Communism in Indochina
tells this story quite clearly. From 1945 to
1951, U.S. aid to France totaled over $3.5 bil-
lion. Without this, the French position in
Indochina would have been untenable. By
1951, the U.S. was paying about 40 percent
of the costs of the Indochina war and our
share was going up. In 1954, it is estimated,
U.S. economic and technical assistance
amounted to $703 million and military aid
totaled almost $2 billion. This added up to
almost 80 percent of the total French costs.
From 1955 to 1961, U.S. military aid averaged
about $200 million per year. This made South
Vietnam the second largest recipient of such
aid, topped only by Korea. By 1963, South
Vietnam ranked first among recipients of
military assistance. In economic assistance, it
followed only India and Pakistan.
The domestic repercussions of "losing"
Vietnam probably were equally important in
Presidential minds. Letting Vietnam "go
Communist" was undoubtedly seen as:
t> opening the floodgates to domestic criti-
cism and attack for being "soft on Com-
munism" or just plain soft;
[> dissipating Presidential influence by hav-
ing to answer these charges;
[> alienating conservative leadership in the
Congress and thereby endangering the Presi-
dent's legislative program;
[> jeopardizing election prospects for the
President and his party;
> undercutting domestic support for a
"responsible" U.S. world role; and
[> enlarging the prospects for a right-wing
reaction — the nightmare of a McCarthy ite
garrison state.
U.S. domestic politics required our leaders
to maintain both a peaceful world and one
in which Communist expansion was stopped.
In order to have the public support necessary
142.
143.
229
to use force against Communism, our leaders
had to employ strong generalized, ideological
rhetoric. The price of this rhetoric was con-
sistency. How could our leaders shed Ameri-
can blood in Korea and keep large numbers
of American troops in Europe at great expense
unless they were also willing to stop Com-
munism in Vietnam?
Bureaucratic judgments and stakes were
also involved in defining U.S. interests
in Vietnam. Most bureaucrats probably
prompted or shared the belief of their leaders
about the serious repercussions of losing
Vietnam. Once direct bureaucratic presence
was established after the French departure,
this belief was reinforced and extended. The
military had to prove that American arms
and advice could succeed where the French
could not. The Foreign Service had to prove
that it could bring about political stability in
Saigon and "build a nation." The cia had to
prove that pacification would work, aid had
to prove that millions of dollars in assistance
and advice could bring political returns.
The U.S. commitment was rationalized as
early as 1950. It was set in 1955 when we
replaced the French. Its logic was further
fulfilled by President Kennedy. After 1965,
when the U.S. took over the war, it was
immeasurably hardened.
There was little conditional character to
the U.S. commitment — except for avoiding
"the big war." Every President talked about
the ultimate responsibility resting with the
Vietnamese (and the French before them).
This "condition" seems to have been meant
much more as a warning to our friends than
a real limitation. In every crunch, it was swept
aside. The only real limit applied to Russia
and China. Our leaders were not prepared to
run the risks of nuclear war or even the risks
of a direct conventional military confronta-
tion with the Soviet Union and China. These
were separate decisions. The line between
them and everything else done in Vietnam
always held firm. With this exception, the
commitment was always defined in terms of
Gdb
the objective to deny the Communists control
over all Vietnam. This was further defined to
preclude coalition governments with the
Communists.
The importance of the objective was evalu-
ated in terms of cost, and the perceived costs
of disengagement outweighed the cost of
further engagement. Some allies might urge
disengagement, but then condemn the U.S.
for doing so. The domestic groups which were
expected to criticize growing involvement
always were believed to be outnumbered by
those who would have attacked "cutting and
running." The question of whether our
leaders would have started down the road if
they knew this would mean over half a mil-
lion men in Vietnam, over 40,000 U.S.
deaths, and the expenditure of well over
$100 billion is historically irrelevant. Only
Presidents Kennedy and Johnson had to
confront the possibility of these large costs.
The point is that each administration was
prepared to pay the costs it could foresee for
itself. No one seemed to have a better solu-
tion. Each could at least pass the baton on to
the next.
Presidents could not treat Vietnam as if
it were "vital" without creating high stakes
internationally, domestically, and within their
own bureaucracies. But the rhetoric conveyed
different messages:
To the Communists, it was a signal that
their actions would be met by counteractions.
To the American people, it set the belief
that the President would ensure that the
threatened nation did not fall into Commu-
nist hands — although without the anticipa-
tion of sacrificing American lives.
To the Congress, it marked the President's
responsibility to ensure that Vietnam did not
go Communist and maximized incentives for
legislators to support him or at least remain
silent.
To the U.S. professional military, it was a
promise that U.S. forces would be used, if
necessary and to the degree necessary, to
defend Vietnam.
144.
145.
230
To the professional U.S. diplomat, it
meant letting our allies know that the U.S.
cared about their fate.
To the President, it laid the groundwork
for the present action and showed that he
was prepared to take the next step to keep
Vietnam non-Communist.
Words were making Vietnam into a show-
case— an Asian Berlin. In the process,
Vietnam grew into a test case of U.S. credi-
bility— to opponents, to allies, but perhaps
most importantly, to ourselves. Public opinion
polls seemed to confirm the political dangers.
Already established bureaucratic judgments
about the importance of Vietnam matured
into cherished convictions and organizational
interests. The war dragged on.
Each successive President, initially caught
by his own belief, was further ensnarled by
his own rhetoric, and the basis for the belief
Went unchallenged. Debates revolved around
how to do things better, and whether they
could be done, not whether they were worth
doing. Prior to 1961, an occasional senator or
Southeast Asian specialist would raise a lonely
and weak voice in doubt. Some press criticism
began thereafter. And later still, wandering
American minstrels returned from the field to
tell their tales of woe in private. General
Ridgway as Chief of Staff of the Army in 1954
questioned the value of Vietnam as against its
potential costs and dangers, and succeeded in
blunting a proposed U.S. military initiative,
although not for the reasons he advanced.
Under Secretary of State George Ball raised
the issue of international priorities in the
summer of 1965 and lost. Clark Clifford as
Secretary of Defense openly challenged the
winnability of the war, as well as Vietnam's
strategic significance, and argued for domestic
priorities. But no systematic or serious exam-
ination of Vietnam's importance to the
United States was ever undertaken within the
government. Endless assertions passed for
analysis. Presidents neither encouraged nor
permitted serious questioning, for to do so
would be to foster the idea that their resolve
146.
Gdb
was something less than complete. The objec-
tive of a non-Communist Vietnam, and after
1954 a non-Communist South Vietnam,
drove U.S. involvement ever more deeply
each step of the way.
//. Means: "Take the Minimal Necessary Steps"
None of our Presidents was seeking total
victory over the Vietnamese Communists.
War critics who wanted victory always knew
this. Those who wanted the U.S. to get out
never believed it. Each President was essen-
tially doing what he thought was minimally
necessary to prevent a Communist victory
during his tenure in office. Each, of course,
sought to strengthen the anti-Communist
Vietnamese forces, but with the aim of a
negotiated settlement. Part of the tragedy of
Vietnam was that the compromises our
Presidents were prepared to offer could never
lead to an end of the war. These preferred
compromises only served to reinforce the
conviction of both Communist and anti-
Communist Vietnamese that they had to
fight to' the finish in their civil war. And so,
more minimal steps were always necessary.
Our Presidents were pressured on all sides.
The pressures for victory came mainly from
the inside and were reflected on the outside.
From inside the administrations, three forces
almost invariably pushed hard. First, the
military establishment generally initiated
requests for broadening and intensifying U.S.
military action. Our professional military
placed great weight on the strategic signif-
icance of Vietnam; they were given a job to
do; their prestige was involved; and of crucial
importance (in the 1960's)— the lives of many
American servicemen were being lost. The
Joint Chiefs of Staff, the maag (Military
Assistance Advisory Group) Chiefs and later
the Commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam
were the focal points for these pressures.
Second, our Ambassadors in Saigon, sup-
ported by the State Department, at times
pressed for and often supported big steps
forward. Their reasons were similar to those
147.
231
of the military. Thirdly, an ever-present group
of "fixers" was making urgent demands to
strengthen and broaden the Saigon govern-
ment in order to achieve political victory.
Every executive agency had its fixers. They
were usually able men whose entire preoccu-
pation was to make things better in Vietnam.
From outside the administration, there were
hawks who insisted on winning and hawks
who wanted to "win or get out." Capitol Hill
hawks, the conservative press, and, for many
years, Catholic organizations were in the
forefront.
The pressures for disengagement and for
de-escalation derived mostly from the outside
with occasional and often unknown allies
from within. Small for most of the Vietnam
years, these forces grew steadily in strength
from 1965 onward. Isolated congressmen and
senators led the fight. First they did so on
anticolonialist grounds. Later their objections
developed moral aspects (interfering in a
civil war) and extended to non-winnability,
domestic priorities, and the senselessness of
the war. Peace organizations and student
groups in particular came to dominate head-
lines and air time. Journalists played a critical
role — especially through television reports.
From within each administration, opposition
could be found: (1) among isolated military
men who did not want the U.S. in an Asian
land war; (2) among some State Department
intelligence and area specialists who knew
Vietnam and believed the U.S. objective was
unattainable at any reasonable price; and
(3) within the civilian agencies of the Defense
Department and isolated individuals at State
and cia, particularly after 1966, whose efforts
were trained on finding a politically feasible
way out.
Our Presidents reacted to the pressures as
brakemen, pulling the switch against both
the advocates of "decisive escalation" and
the advocates of disengagement. The politics
of the Presidency largely dictated this role,
but the personalities of the Presidents were
also important. None were as ideological as
Gc\b
many persons around them. All were basically
centrist politicians.
Their immediate aim was always to prevent
a Commjnist takeover. The actions they ap-
proved were usually only what was minimally
necessary to that aim. Each President deter-
mined the "minimal necessity" by trial and
error and his own judgment. They might have
done more and done it more rapidly if they
were convinced that: (1) the threat of a
Communist takeover were more immediate,
(2) U.S. domestic politics would have been
more permissive, (3) the government of
South Vietnam had the requisite political
stability and military potential for effective
use and (4) the job really would have gotten
done. After 1965, however, the minimal
necessity became the maximum they could
get given the same domestic and international
constraints.
The tactic of the minimally necessary deci-
sion makes optimum sense for the politics of
the Presidency. Even our strongest Presidents
have tended to shy away from decisive action.
It has been too uncertain, too risky. They
derive their strength from movement (the
image of a lot of activity) and building and
neutralizing opponents. Too seldom has there
been forceful moral leadership; it may even
be undemocratic. The small step that main-
tains the momentum gives the President the
chance to gather more political support. It
gives the appearance of minimizing possible
mistakes. It allows time to gauge reactions.
It serves as a pressure-relieving valve against
those who want to do more. It can be doled
out. Above all, it gives the President some-
thing to do next time.
The tactic makes consummate sense when
it is believed that nothing will fully work or
that the costs of a "winning" move would be
too high. This was the case with Vietnam.
This decision-making tactic explains why the
U.S. involvement in Vietnam was gradual
and step by step.
While the immediate aim was to prevent a
Communist victory and improve the position
148.
149.
232
of the anti-Communists, the longer term goal
was a political settlement. As late as February
1947, Secretary of State Marshall expressed
the hope that "a pacific basis of adjustment
of the difficulties" between France and the
Vietminh could be found.1 After that,
Truman's policy hardened, but there is no
evidence to suggest that until 1950 he was
urging the French not to settle with the
Vietnamese Communists. Eisenhower, it
should be remembered, was the President who
tacitly agreed (by not intervening in 1954) to
the creation of a Communist state in North
Vietnam. President Kennedy had all he could
do to prevent complete political collapse in
South Vietnam. He had, therefore, little basis
on which to compromise. President Johnson
inherited this political instability, and to add
to his woes, he faced in 1965 what seemed to
be the prospect of a Communist military
victory. Yet, by his standing offer for free and
internationally supervised elections, he ap-
parently was prepared to accept Communist
participation in the political life of the
South.
By traditional diplomatic standards of
negotiations between sovereign states, these
were not fatuous compromises. One compro-
mise was, in effect, to guarantee that the
Communists could remain in secure control
of North Vietnam. The U.S. would not seek
to overthrow this regime. The other com-
promise was to allow the Communists in
South Vietnam to seek power along the lines
of Communist parties in France and Italy,
i.e. to give them a "permanent minority
position."
But the real struggle in Vietnam was not
between sovereign states. It was among Viet-
namese. It was a civil war and a war for
national independence.
Herein lies the paradox and the tragedy of
Vietnam. Most of our leaders and their
critics did see that Vietnam was a quagmire,
but did not see that the real stakes — who shall
'New York Times, February 8. 1947.
150.
Gelb
govern Vietnam — were not negotiable. Free
elections, local sharing of power, international
supervision, cease-fires — none of these could
serve as a basis for settlement. What were
legitimate compromises from Washington's
point of view were matters of life and death
to the Vietnamese. For American leaders, the
stakes were "keeping their word" and saving
their political necks. For the Vietnamese, the
stakes were their lives and their lifelong
political aspirations. Free elections meant
bodily exposure to the Communist guerrillas
and likely defeat to the anti-Communists. The
risk was too great. There was no trust, no
confidence.
The Vietnam war could no more be settled
by traditional diplomatic compromises than
any other civil war. President Lincoln could
not settle with the South. The Spanish
Republicans and General Franco's Loyalists
could not have conceivably mended their
fences by elections. None of the post- World
War II insurgencies — Greece, Malaya, and the
Philippines — ended with a negotiated peace.
In each of these cases, the civil differences
were put to rest — if at all — only by the logic
of war.
It is commonly acknowledged that Vietnam
would have fallen to the Communists in
1945-46, in 1954, and in 1965 had it not been
for the intervention of first the French and
then the Americans. The Vietnamese Com-
munists, who were also by history the Viet-
namese nationalists, would not accept only
part of a prize for which they had paid so
heavily. The anti-Communist Vietnamese,
protected by the French and the Americans,
would not put themselves at the Communists'
mercy.
It may be that our Presidents understood
this better than their critics. The critics,
especially on the political left, fought for
"better compromises," not realizing that even
the best could not be good enough, and fought
for broad nationalist governments, not realiz-
ing there was no middle force in Vietnam.
Our Presidents, it seems, recognized that there
151.
233
was no middle ground and that "better com-
promises" would frighten our Saigon allies
without bringing about a compromise peace.
And they believed that a neutralization
formula would compromise South Vietnam
away to the Communists. So the longer-term
aim of peace repeatedly gave way to the im-
mediate needs of the war and the next
necessary step.
III. Expectations: "We Must Persevere"
Each new step was taken not because of
wishful thinking or optimism about its leading
to a victory in South Vietnam. Few of our
leaders thought that they could win the war
in a conventional sense or that the Commu-
nists would be decimated to a point that they
would simply fade away. Even as new and
further steps were taken, coupled with expres-
sions of optimism, many of our leaders
realized that more — and still more — would
have to be done. Few of these men felt con-
fident about how it would all end or when.
After 1965, however, they allowed the im-
pression of "winnability" to grow in order to
justify their already heavy investment and
domestic support for the war.
The strategy always was to persevere. Per-
severance, it seemed, was the only way to
avoid or postpone having to pay the domestic
political costs of failure. Finally, perseverance,
it was hoped, would convince the Commu-
nists that our will to continue was firm.
Perhaps, then, with domestic support for
perseverance, with bombing North Vietnam,
and with inflicting heavy casualties in the
South, the Communists would relent. Per-
haps, then, a compromise could be negotiated
to save the Communists' face without giving
them South Vietnam.
Optimism was a part of the "gamesman-
ship" of Vietnam. It had a purpose. Personal-
organizational optimism was the product of a
number of motivations and calculations:
t> Career services tacitly and sometimes
explicitly pressured their professionals to im-
part good news.
G<r!b
D> Good news was seen as a job well done;
bad news as personal failure.
[> The reporting system was set up so that
assessments were made by the implementors.
\> Optimism bred optimism so that it was
difficult to be pessimistic this time if you were
optimistic the last time.
t> People told their superiors what they
thought they wanted to hear.
0 The American ethic is to get the job
done.
Policy optimism also sprang from several
rational needs:
[> To maintain domestic support for the
war.
t> To keep up the morale of our Vietnamese
allies and build some confidence and trust
between us and them.
0 To stimulate military and bureaucratic
morale to work hard.
There were, however, genuine optimists
and grounds for genuine optimism. Some
periods looked promising: the year preceding
the French downfall at Dienbienphu; the
years of the second Eisenhower Presidency
when most attention was riveted on Laos and
before the insurgency was stepped up in
South Vietnam; 1962 and early 1963 before
the strategic hamlet pacification program col-
lapsed; and the last six months of 1967 before
the 1968 Tet offensive.
Many additional periods by comparison
with previous years yielded a sense of real
improvement. By most conventional stan-
dards— the size and firepower of friendly
Vietnamese forces, the number of hamlets
pacified, the number of "free elections" being
held, the number of Communists killed, and
so forth — reasonable men could and did think
in cautiously optimistic terms.
But comparison with years past is an
illusory measure when it is not coupled with
judgments about how far there still is to go
and how likely it is that the goal can ever be
reached. It was all too easy to confuse short-
term breathing spells with long-term trends
and to confuse "things getting better" with
152.
153.
234
"winning." Many of those who had genuine
hope suffered from either a lack of knowledge
about Vietnam or a lack of sensitivity toward
politics or both.
The basis for pessimism and the warning
signals were always present. Public portrayals
of success glowed more brightly than the full
range of classified reporting. Readily available
informal and personal accounts were less
optimistic still. The political instability of our
Vietnamese allies — from Bao Dai through
Diem to President Thieu have always been
apparent. The weaknesses of the armed forces
of our Vietnamese allies were common
knowledge. Few years went by when the
fighting did not gain in intensity. Our leaders
did not have to know much about Vietnam
to see all this.
Most of our leaders saw the Vietnam quag-
mire for what it was. Optimism was, by and
large, put in perspective. This means that
many knew that each step would be followed
by another. Most seemed to have understood
that more assistance would be required either
to improve the relative position of our Viet-
namese allies or simply to prevent a deteriora-
tion of their position. Almost each year and
often several times a year, key decisions had
to be made to prevent deterioration or col-
lapse. These decisions were made with hard
bargaining, but rapidly enough for us now to
perceive a preconceived consensus to go on.
Sometimes several new steps were decided at
once, but announced and implemented piece-
meal. The whole pattern conveyed the feeling
of more to come.
With a tragic sense of "no exit," our leaders
stayed their course. They seemed to hope
more than expect that something would
"give." The hope was to convince the Viet-
namese Communists through perseverance
that the U.S. would stay in South Vietnam
until they abandoned their struggle. The
hope, in a sense, was the product of disbelief.
How could a tiny, backward Asian country
not have a breaking point when opposed by
the might of the United States? How could
Gelb
they not relent and negotiate with the U.S.?
And yet, few could answer two questions
with any confidence: Why should the Com-
munists abandon tomorrow the goals they
had been paying so dear a price to obtain
yesterday? What was there really to negotiate?
No one seemed to be able to develop a per-
suasive scenario on how the war could end
by peaceful means.
Our Presidents, given their politics and
thinking, had nothing to do but persevere.
But the Communists' strategy was also to
persevere, to make the U.S. go home. It was
and is a civil war for national independence.
It was and is a Greek tragedy.
IV. After Twenty-Fire Years
A quick review of history supports these
interpretations. To the Roosevelt Adminis-
tration during World War II, Indochina was
not perceived as a "vital" area. The United
States defeated Japan without Southeast Asia,
and Indochina was not occupied by the allies
until after Japan's defeat, fdr spoke informally
to friends, and newsmen of placing Indochina
under United Nations trusteeship after the
war, but — aware of French, British and U.S.
bureaucratic hostility to this — made no de-
tailed plans and asked for no staff work prior
to his death. For all practical purposes,
Truman inherited no Southeast Asia policy.
In 1946 and 1947, the U.S. acquiesced in
the re-establishment of French sovereignty.
Our policy was a passive one of hoping for a
negotiated settlement of the "difficulties"
between Paris and the Vietminh indepen-
dence movement of Ho Chi Minh. To the
south, in Indonesia, we had started to pressure
the Dutch to grant independence and with-
draw, and a residue of anticolonialism re-
mained in our first inchoate approaches to
an Indochina policy as well.
But events in Europe and China changed
the context from mid-1947 on. Two important
priorities were to rearm and strengthen France
as the cornerstone of European defense and
recovery in the face of Russian pressure, and
154.
155.
235
to prevent a further expansion of victorious
Chinese Communism. The Truman Doctrine
depicted a world full of dominoes. In May
1950, before Korea, Secretary of State
Acheson announced that the U.S. would
provide military and economic assistance to
the French and their Indochinese allies for
the direct purpose of combating Communist
expansion.2 After years of hesitating, Truman
finally decided that anti-Communism was
more important than anticolonialism in
Indochina.
Acheson admits that U.S. policy was a
"muddled hodgepodge":
The criticism, however, fails to recognize
the limits on the extent to which one may
successfully coerce an ally. . . . Further-
more, the result of withholding help to
France would, at most, have removed the
colonial power. It could not have made the
resulting situation a beneficial one either
for Indochina or for Southeast Asia, or in
the more important effort of furthering the
stability and defense of Europe. So while
we may have tried to muddle through and
were certainly not successful, I could not
think then or later of a better course. One
can suggest, perhaps, doing nothing. That
might have had merit, but as an attitude
for the leader of a great alliance toward an
important ally, indeed one essential to a
critical endeavor, it had its demerits, too.3
Several months after the Korean War
began, Acheson recalled the warning of an
"able colleague": "Not only was there real
danger that our efforts would fail in their
immediate purpose and waste valuable re-
sources in the process, but we were moving
into a position in Indochina in which 'our
responsibilities tend to supplant rather than
complement those of the French'." Acheson
then remembers: "I decided however, that
having put our hand to the plow, we would
not look back."1 He decided this despite the
'Department of State Bulletin, May 1950. p. 821.
'Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation, (T^ew Torif
W. W. Norton. 1969J. p. 673.
Cclb
fact that he "recognized as no longer valid
an earlier French intention to so weaken the
enemy before reducing French forces in Indo-
china that indigenous forces could handle the
situation."5
V. The Eisenhower Administration
President Eisenhower inherited the prob-
lem. Although, with Vietminh successes, the
situation took on graver overtones, he, too,
pursued a policy of "minimum action" to
prevent the total "loss" of Vietnam to Com-
munism. Sherman Adams, Eisenhower's assis-
tant, explains how the problem was seen in
the mid-1950's:
If the Communists had pushed on with an
aggressive offensive after the fall of Dien-
bienphu, instead of stopping and agreeing
to stay out of Southern Vietnam, Laos and
Cambodia, there was a strong possibility
that the United States would have moved
against them. A complete Communist con-
quest of Indochina would have had far
graver consequence for the West than a
Red victory in Korea.6
Apparently the President felt he could live
with Communist control in the restricted area
of North Vietnam, away from the rest of
Southeast Asia.
Eisenhower did not take the minimal neces-
sary step to save all of Indochina, but he did
take the necessary steps to prevent the loss of
most of Indochina. He paid almost all the
French war cost, increased the U.S. military
advisory mission, supplied forty B-26's to the
French, and continued the threat of U.S.
intervention, first by "united action" and
then by forming seato. In taking these ac-
tions, Eisenhower was deciding against Vice-
President Nixon and Admiral Radford,
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who
favored U.S. intervention in force, and
against General Ridgway, Chief of the Army
'"Ibid., p. 676-7.
'Ibid., p. 674.
'Sherman Adams. Firsthand Report (N.cw TorJj Har-
per&Row. 196U, p. 120.
156.
157.
236
Staff, who opposed any action that could
lead to an Asian land war. He was treading
the well-worn middle path of doing just
enough to balance off contradictory domestic,
bureaucratic, and international pressures.
The Vietnamese Communists agreed to the
compromise, believing that winning the full
prize was only a matter of time.
In public statements and later in his
memoirs, President Eisenhower gave glimpses
of his reasoning. At the time of Dienbienphu,
he noted, ". . . we ought to look at this thing
with some optimism and some determination
. . . long faces and defeatism don't win
battles."7 Later he wrote, "I am convinced
that the French could not win the war because
the internal political situation in Vietnam,
weak and confused, badly weakened their
military position."8 But he persevered never-
theless, believing that "the decision to give
this aid was almost compulsory. The United
States had no real alternative unless we were
to abandon Southeast Asia."9
The Geneva Conference of 1954 was fol-
lowed by eighteen bleak and pessimistic
months as official Washington wondered
whether the pieces could be put back together.
Despite or perhaps because of the pessimism,
U.S. aid was increased. Then, in the fall of
1956, Dulles could say: "We have a clean base
there now, without a taint of colonialism.
Dienbienphu was a blessing in disguise."10
The years of "cautious optimism" had begun.
President Eisenhower kept the U.S. out of
war because he allowed a territorial compro-
mise with the Communists. More critically,
'Public Papers of the Presidents, Eisenhower, 1954,
p. 471. This remar\ was made on May 12, 1954.
"Dunght D. Eisenhower, Mandate for Change, (^iew
tor\: Doubhday, 1961), p. 372.
'Ibid., p. 373.
'"Emmet John Hughes, The Ordeal of Power, (l^lew
Yorlj: Dell. 1962), p. 182. Eisenhower himself wrote
that in 1954 "The strongest reason of all for United
States refusal to respond by itsel/ to French pleas was
our tradition of anti-colonialism." ("in Mandate for
Change, p. 373;
Gelb
he decided to replace the French and maintain
a direct U.S. presence in Indochina. With
strong rhetoric, military training programs,
support for Ngo Dinh Diem in his refusal to
hold the elections prescribed by the Geneva
accords, and continuing military and eco-
nomic assistance, he made the new state or
"zone" of South Vietnam an American
responsibility. Several years of military quiet
in South Vietnam did not hide the smoldering
political turmoil in that country nor did it
obscure the newspaper headlines which regu-
larly proclaimed that the war in Indochina
had shifted to Laos.
VI. The Kennedy Administration
The Administration of John F. Kennedy
began in an aura of domestic sacrifice and
international confrontation. The inaugura-
tion speech set the tone of U.S. responsibil-
ities in "hazardous and dangerous" times.
Vietnam had a special and immediate im-
portance which derived from the general
international situation. Kennedy's predictions
about dangerous times came true quickly —
and stayed true — and he wanted to show
strength to the Communists. But it was also
the precarious situation in Laos and the
"neutralist" compromise which Kennedy was
preparing for Laos that were driving the
President deeper into Vietnam. In Sorensen's
words, Kennedy was "skeptical of the extent
of our involvement [in Vietnam] but un-
willing to abandon his predecessor's pledge
or permit a Communist conquest. . . .""
Kennedy had to face three basic general
decisions. First, was top priority to go to
political reform or fighting the war? On this
issue the fixers, who wanted to give priority
to political reform, were arrayed against the
military. Second, should the line of involve-
ment be drawn at combat units? On this issue
the fixers were more quiet than in opposition.
The military and the Country Team pushed
hard — even urging the President to threaten
"Theodore Sorensen. Kennedy, (f^ew "for\: Harper &•
Row. 1965;. p. 639.
J 58.
159.
237
Hanoi with U.S. bombing. Some counter-
weight came from State and the White House
staff. Third, should the President make a
clear, irrevocable and open-ended commit-
ment to prevent a Communist victory?
Would this strengthen or weaken the U.S.
hand in Saigon? Would it frighten away the
Communists? What would be the domestic
political consequences?
Kennedy's tactics and decisions — like
Eisenhower's — followed the pattern of doing
what was minimally necessary. On the polit-
ical versus military priority issue, Kennedy
did not make increasing military assistance
definitively contingent on political reform,
but he pointed to the absence of reform as
the main reason for limiting the U.S. military
role. On the combat unit issue, according to
biographer Sorensen, "Kennedy never made
a final negative decision on troops. In typical
Kennedy fashion, he made it difficult for any
of the pro-intervention advocates to charge
him privately with weakness."12 On the third
issue, he avoided an open-ended commitment,
but escalated his rhetoric about the impor-
tance of Vietnam. While he did authorize an
increase of U.S. military personnel from 685
to 16,000, he did so slowly, and not in two or
three big decisions. He continually doled out
the increases. He gave encouragement to
bureaucratic planning and studying as a safety
valve — a valve he thought he could control.
He kept a very tight rein on information to
the public about the war. In Salinger's words,
he "was not anxious to admit the existence
of a real war . . .",3 By minimizing U.S. in-
volvement, Kennedy was trying to avoid pub-
lic pressures either to do more or to do less.
The President would make it "their" war
until he had no choice but to look at it in a
different light. He would not look at it in
another light until Diem, who looked like a
losing horse, was replaced. He would not
'-Ibid., p. 654.
Gelb
gamble on long odds. But it is not clear what
he expected to get as a replacement for Diem.
With the exception of much of 1962, which
even the North Vietnamese have called
"Diem's year," the principal Kennedy deci-
sions were made in an atmosphere of deteri-
oration, not progress, in Vietnam. This
feeling of deterioration explains why Kennedy
dispatched so many high-level missions to
Vietnam. As Kennedy's biographers have
written, the President was not really being
told he was winning, but how much more he
would have to do.
Writing in 1965, Theodore Sorensen
summed up the White House view of events
following the Diem coup in November 1963:
The President, while eager to make clear
that our aim was to get out of Vietnam, had
always been doubtful about the optimistic
reports constantly filed by the military on
the progress of the war. . . . The struggle
could well be, he thought, this nation's
severest test of endurance and patience. . . .
He was simply going to weather it out, a
nasty, untidy mess to which there was no
other acceptable solution. Talk of abandon-
ing so unstable an ally and so costly a com-
mitment 'only makes it easy for the
Communists,' said the President. 'I think
we should stay.'14
VII. The Johnson Administration
Lyndon Johnson assumed office with a
reputation as a pragmatic politician and not
a cold war ideologue. His history on Southeast
Asia indicated caution and comparative re-
straint. And yet it was this same man who as
President presided over and led the U.S. into
massive involvement.
Three facts conspired to make it easier for
Johnson to take the plunge on the assumed
importance of Vietnam than his predecessors.
First, the world was a safer place to live in
and Vietnam was the only continuing crisis.
Europe was secure. The Sino-Soviet split had
deepened. Mutual nuclear deterrence existed
"Pierre Salinger. With Kennedy, CN.ew Yot\ Double-
day, 1966). pp. 319-329.
160.
'Sorensen, op. cit., p. 661.
161.
238
between the two superpowers. Second, the
situation in Vietnam was more desperate than
it ever had been. If the U.S. had not inter-
vened in 1965, South Vietnam would have
been conquered by the Communists. Third,
after years of effort, the U.S. conventional
military forces were big enough and ready
enough to intervene. Unlike his predecessors,
Johnson had the military capability to back
up his words.
In sum, Vietnam became relatively more
important, it was in greater danger, and the
U.S. was in a position to do something
about it.
At Johns Hopkins in April 1965, the
President told the American people what he
would do: "We will do everything necessary
to reach that objective [of no external inter-
ference in South Vietnam], and we will do
only what is absolutely necessary." But in
order to prevent defeat and in order to keep
the faith with his most loyal supporters, the
minimum necessary became the functional
equivalent of gradual escalation. The Air
Force and the Commander in Chief, Pacific
(cincpac) pressed hard for full systems bomb-
ing— the authority to destroy 94 key North
Vietnamese targets in 16 days. Johnson,
backed and pressured in the other direction
by Secretary McNamara, doled out approval
for new targets over three years in a painstak-
ing and piecemeal fashion. Johnson accom-
modated dovish pressure and the advice of
the many pragmatists who surrounded him
by making peace overtures. But these over-
tures were either accompanied with or fol-
lowed by escalation. Johnson moved toward
those who wanted three-quarters of a million
U.S. fighting men in Vietnam, but he never
got there. Guided by judgments of domes-
tic repercussion and influenced again by
McNamara, the President made at least eight
separate decisions on U.S. force levels in
Vietnam over a four-year period.15 For the
"See the Chronology in U.S. Senate Foreign Relations
Committee. Background Information Relating to South-
east Asia and Vietnam, March 1 969.
Gelb
"fixers" who felt that U.S. conduct of the war
missed its political essence and for the doves
who wanted to see something besides destruc-
tion, Johnson placed new emphasis on "the
othet war" — pacification, nation-building,
and political development — in February 1966.
Johnson referred to this whole complex of
actions and the air war in particular as his
attempt to "seduce not rape" the North
Vietnamese.
The objective of the Johnson Administra-
tion was to maintain an independent non-
Communist South Vietnam. In the later
years, this was rephrased: "allowing the South
Vietnamese to determine their own future
without external interference." As the Presi-
dent crossed the old barriers in pursuit of
this objective, he established new ones. While
he ordered the bombing of North Vietnam,
he would not approve the bombing of targets
which ran the risk of confrontation with
China and Russia. While he permitted the
U.S. force level in Vietnam to go over one-
half million men, he would not agree to call
up the Reserves. While he was willing to
spend $25 billion in one year on the war, he
would not put the U.S. economy on a war-
time mobilization footing. But the most
important Johnson barrier was raised against
invading Cambodia, Laos, and North Viet-
nam. This limitation was also a cornerstone
in the President's hopes for a compromise
settlement. He would agree to the permanent
existence of North Vietnam — even help that
country economically — if North Vietnam
would extend that same right to South
Vietnam.
In order to sustain public and bureaucratic
support for his policy, Johnson's method was
to browbeat and isolate his opponents. To
the American people, he painted the alterna-
tives to what he was doing as irresponsible
or reckless. In either case, the result would be
a greater risk of future general war. The
bureaucracy used this same technique of
creating the bug-out or bomb-out extremes in
order to maintain as many of its own members
162.
163.
239
in "the middle road." The price of consensus
— within the bureaucracy and in the public
at large — was invariably a middle road of
contradictions and no priorities for action.
President Johnson was the master of con-
sensus. On Vietnam this required melding
the proponents of negotiations with the
proponents of military victory. The technique
for maintaining this Vietnam consensus was
gradual escalation punctuated by dramatic
peace overtures. As the war was escalated
without an end in sight, the numbers of
people Johnson could hold together dimin-
ished. The pressures for disengagement or for
"decisive military action" became enormous,
but with the "hawks" always outnumbering
and more strategically placed than the
"doves."
Johnson knew he had inherited a deteri-
orating situation in Vietnam. Vietcong mili-
tary successes and constant change in the
Saigon government from 1964 to 1966 were
not secrets to anyone. Throughout the critical
year of 1965, he struck the themes of endur-
ance and more-to-come. In his May 4, 1965
requests for Vietnam Supplemental Appro-
priations he warned: "I see no choice but to
continue the course we are on, filled as it is
with peril and uncertainty." In his July 28,
1965 press conference he announced a new
125,000 troop ceiling and went on to say:
"Additional forces will be needed later, and
they will be sent as requested."
Talk about "turning corners" and winning
a military victory reached a crescendo in 1967.
At the same time a new counterpoint emerged
— "stalemate."16 The message of the stalemate
proponents was that the U.S. was strong
enough to prevent defeat, but that the situa-
tion defied victory. Hanoi would continue to
match the U.S. force build-up and would
not "cry uncle" over the bombing. The
Saigon government and army had basic polit-
ical and structural problems which they were
unlikely to be able to overcome. Stalemate,
Gelb
it was urged, should be used as a basis for
getting a compromise settlement with Hanoi.
These arguments were not lost on the
President. At Guam in March 1967, while
others around him were waxing eloquent
about progress, the President was guardedly
optimistic, speaking of "a favorable turning
point, militarily and politically." But after
one of the meetings he was reported to have
said: "We have a difficult, a serious, long-
drawn-out, agonizing problem that we do not
have an answer for."17 Nor did the President
overlook the effects of the 1968 Tet offensive,
coming as it did after many months of
virtually unqualified optimism by him and by
others. He stopped the bombing partially,
increased troop strength slightly, made a peace
overture, and announced his retirement.
In November 1963, Johnson is quoted as
saying: "I am not going to be the President
who saw Southeast Asia go the way China
went."18 In the spring of 1965, Lady Bird
Johnson quoted him as saying: "I can't get
out. I can't finish it with what I have got. So
what the Hell can I do?"19 President Johnson,
like his predecessors, persevered and handed
the war on to his successor.
VIII. Where Do We Go From Here?
If Vietnam were a story of how the system
failed, that is, if our leaders did not do what
they wanted to do or if they did not realize
what they were doing or what was happening,
it would be easy to package a large and
assorted box of policy-making panaceas. For
example: Fix the method of reporting from
the field. Fix the way progress is measured in
a guerrilla war. Make sure the President sees
all the real alternatives. But these are all
third-order issues, because the U.S. political-
bureaucratic system did not fail; it worked.
"Quoted in Henry Brandon, Anatomy of Error, ( Bos-
ton Gambit. 1969A p. 102.
"R. W. Apple, "Vietnam The Signs of Stalemate.
New York Times, August 7, 1 967.
"Tom Wicker. JFK and LBJ, (Hew Tor(( Penguin
Boo\s. 1968). p. 208.
"Lady Bird Johnson. A White House Diary, (Hew
y0r\: Holt. Rinehart and Winston. 1970). p. 248.
164-
165.
240
Our leaders felt they had to prevent the
loss of Vietnam to Communism, and they
have succeeded so far in doing just that. Most
of those who made Vietnam policy still
believe that they did the right thing and
lament only the domestic repercussions of
their actions. It is because the price of attain-
ing this goal has been so dear in lives, trust,
dollars, and priorities, and the benefits so
intangible, remote, and often implausible,
that these leaders and we ourselves are forced
to seek new answers and new policies.
Paradoxically, the way to get these new
answers is not by asking why did the system
fail, but why did it work so tragically well.
There is, then, only one first-order issue — how
and why does our political-bureaucratic sys-
tem decide what is vital and what is not? By
whom, in what manner, and for what reasons
was it decided that all Vietnam must not fall
into Communist hands?
Almost all of our leaders since 1949 shared
this conviction. Only a few voices in the
wilderness were raised in opposition. Even as
late as mid-1967, most critics were arguing
that the U.S. could not afford to lose or be
"driven from the field," that the real problem
was our bombing of North Vietnam, and that
this had to be stopped in order to bring about
a negotiated settlement. Fewer still were urging
that such a settlement should involve a coali-
tion government with the Communists.
Hardly anyone was saying that the outcome
in Vietnam did not matter.
There is little evidence of much critical
thinking about the relation of Vietnam to
U.S. security. Scholars, journalists, politi-
cians, and bureaucrats all seem to have
assumed either that Vietnam was "vital" to
U.S. national security or that the American
people would not stand for the loss of "an-
other" country to Communism.
Anti-Communism has been and still is a
potent force in American politics, and most
people who were dealing with the Vietnam
problem simply believed that the Congress
and the public would "punish" those who
Gelb
were "soft on Communism." Our leaders not
only anticipated this kind of public reaction,
but believed that there were valid reasons for
not permitting the Communists to take all of
Vietnam by force. In other words, they
believed in what they were doing on the
national security "merits." The domino
theory, which was at the heart of the matter,
rested on the widely shared attitude that
security was indivisible, that weakness in one
place would only invite aggression in others.
What can be done?
The President can do more than Presidents
have in the past to call his national security
bureaucracy to task. He can show the bureau-
cracy that he expects it to be more rigorous in
determining what is vital or important or
unimportant. Specifically, he can reject rea-
soning which simply asserts that security is
indivisible, and he can foster the belief that
while the world is an interconnected whole,
actions can be taken in certain parts of the
world to compensate for actions which are
not taken elsewhere. For example, if the real
concern about Vietnam were the effect of its
loss on Japan, the Middle East and Berlin,
could we not take actions in each of these
places to mitigate the "Vietnam fallout"?
None of these efforts with the bureaucracy
can succeed, however, unless there is a
change in general political attitudes as well.
If anti-Communism persists as an overriding
domestic political issue it will also be the
main bureaucratic i^sue. Altering public
attitudes will take time, education, and polit-
ical courage — and it will create a real dilemma
for the President. If the President goes "too
far" in re-educating public and congressional
opinions about Communism, he may find
that he will have little support for threatening
or using military force when he believes that
our security really is at stake. In the end, it
will still be the President who is held respon-
sible for U.S. security. Yet, if our Vietnam
experience has taught us anything, it is that
the President must begin the process of re-
education despite the risks.
166.
167.
DOCUMENTS RELATING TO OSS ACTIVITY
IN FRENCH INDOCHINA
INTRODUCTION
Sections I, II, and III have been reproduced by offset printing in
order to convey to the reader a better sense of the original documents.
Because of their poor legibility the documents in section IV were
set in print keeping the format of the original documents.
(241)
(2]
I. THE "DEER" MISSION TO VIET MINH HEAD-
QUARTERS, JULY-SEPTEMBER, 1945
SPECIAL OPERATIONS 3RAFCH
/TO 627
Date ; 16 Hay 194-5
SUBJECT : Letter of Instructions.
TO s Meg. Thomas
1. You are SO Team No. 13 , Code
name Deer „ You and your team are to proceed to Poseh
as your first destination* v'hen you arrive at your
first destination you will be met by
from the OSS Sub Base. In the event you are not met
by him you will inquire .CCC.Hq,.
what his phone number is or how to contact hinu You are to tell
■ into what area you are going and he will
assist you in reaching your final destination,
2. Your team's and your mission is to interdict Jap
lines of Communication in the Hanoi - Hingming
.area, this includes &t & Highway""
your secondary missions are to work with guerrillas as well as
indicate targets of opportunity for the air force, You are to
operate with 3S5S I and Chinese units as assigned
See attached overlay for your operating area,, From time to time
you may be asked for weather reports for air drops as well as for
air force operations. This information will be asked by (1)
(2)Capt Thornton , whose code name is (D Chow for the air force
at V » C2") Setter
3> The Commanding and Liaison officer of all teams ope-
" rating in the area mentioned in paragraph 2 will be
~ , whose code name is Chow en(j who will be with
the headquarters of -sa^c^sssgggx C(J<J at Poseh (?)
He v/ill coordinate, as'much as possible, the activities of the
SO teams in the area. From him you will receive, from time to
time 5 instructions and questions.
4- Your radio communications will be tied in to
and for all your supply requests you will use supply code
list issued to you, and they will bo taken ere of by Lx. l/hallen
thus relieving ; of purely administra-
tive matters. Although your communications will be with
ho will bS* relayed all messages sent
by you. "
(243)
244
deceived at Kunming
27 July 194-5 via
?o : Chow via 7/ampler
'roa: Deer keuort #1
17 July 1945
Kumlung
Tonkin
a .Z.C.
I. The Landing:
l/e all landed safely. Sgt Zeilski, It IJontfort and I landed in
trees and got a few minor scratches. While hanging in the tree I
whipped out ray Handle Talkie and was able to hear you answer once.
I was unable to pull out my very pistol.
j-j..
The Reception:
\ 'Jof AG/.S and by
i7e were first greeted by
fthe boy from Boston, and employed by GET. I then was called on
for a short speech to the guard. They presented arms and X gave
forth a few flowery sentences. The guard consisted of about 200
armed men. Armament consisted of French rifles, a few Brens, a few
tommies, a few carbines and a few stens. I was then escorted to Mr.
Koe, one of the big leaders of the VEL (Viet L'.inh League) Party. He
speaks excellent English but is very weak physically as he recently
walked in from Tsingsi. He received us most cordially. Me then
were shown our quarters. They had built for us a special bamboo
shelter, consisting of a bamboo floor a few feet off the ground and
a roof of palm leaves. VJe then had supper consisting of Beer
(recently captured) rice, bamboo sprouts, and barbecued stea/sf. They
freshly slaughtered a cow in our honor.
Hi. Equipment:
Hothing appears broken. By 7 PII they had brought all the con-
tainers to our "house".
IV. '..'eather:
Cooler than Poseh. . e slept verjf comfortably on our silk sheets.
V. Hcdio:
we tried to make contact at 8:00 this morning (17 July) but
w. s unsuccessful, but will try tonite on 6 o'clock sked. AG-A3 sent
VI. Conference with I'.'r. hoe, Party Leader:
"lad long conference with Hoe, I this morning (17 July)
The main discussion centered on our target and the French.
245
A. First the French, '. r. Hoe said if the gu; rd had knov.'n Font-
fort was French they might have had him shot on the spot. !r. Hoe
personally likes many French but he says most of his soldiers don't.
He says when the French retreated from Caobang they shot and gassed
many political prisoners. Llontfort's identity was given away at once
because one of the Artnernites recognized him having known him at Cao-
bang.
He continued to say that the part:' bad about 3?0C0 ov more men
under arms in Tonkin, and that we would be helped everywhere we went-
provided the French were not with us. I asked if he would agree to
us sending in only the French officers and the Annamites at Poseh.
He said no. He will welcome 10 million Americans, however, He
further agreed that if the French agreed he would consent to our
bringing in the Annamites now at Poseh. However, for several reasons
it would be better not to:
1) He can give me here as many men as I need. He recommends not
more than 100. Many are partially trained under a leader who was
trained in guerilla warfare by the Havy in China.
2) These men here know the country better.
3) Security. Too many planes will attract the Japs.
4) Doubtful if the French will give them up.
He is willing that PHAC and LOGOS remain here, but since they
are associated with the French prefers their return. He can furnish
us with all the interpreters we need.
B. Second the target. He suggests a change in our target, to
wit: operate on the Thai Hguven, Bac Ken, Cao Bang road instead of
Hanoe -Langs on road, for the following reasons:
1) The airforce has disrupted the traffic on Hanoi-Langs on ro:d.
2) It has lost its importance since ITanning was taken.
3) The Japs are in much greater force in that area.
4) The VI.iL Party are not as strong or as well armed in that area.
5) The Japs are constantly using the Thai-Hgugen-Bac Han. Uore
so that Hanoi-Langson road.
6) Better area for training soldiers here.
7) The present area is completely controlled by the VHL. Ho
Japs penetrate.
d) This area is becoming static end from here we can take our
men after they are trained and more south operate on the RR to Lao-
kay and eventually on the FH line Hanoi-Saigon, which is much more
vital and important, or if necessary take our trained men and operate
on Hanoi-Lings on road.
VTI . He com.' lend- 1 ions:
I urgently recommend the following -and request the following:
a) Eliminate all French and Annamese at Poseh.
b) Return kontfort, Phac & Logos to Poseh. This can be done
soon as they have completed r.n L-5 strip and \is going-
out Friday (20 July) by L~5« .
c) Par; chute all the rest of both teams incxuang meaical men
here as soon as possible with -all arms end r bout l/3rd of the. demo-
246
lition equipment.
g) Train ti a men here and then r.ove north and operate nesr Cho
Chu where v;e will get another DZ and drop the remainder of the sup-
plies. .."e plan to set up a fairly permanent b se there.
g) Recall ^ncl Bonglois immediately to Poseh. If
they have started out walking an effort must bo made to recrll them.
f ) .'Send down O'./I news photos end printing paper for local vork.
hculd be a big help.
g) Forget the Communist Bogy. VI.iL is 
Live Music Archive
Librivox Free Audio
Metropolitan Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Internet Arcade
Console Living Room
Books to Borrow
Open Library
TV News
Understanding 9/11